🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness". The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its findings. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Erode Credibility' The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive. "Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided. "Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster. "This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."