🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Says Ofcom The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom. An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said. 'Possibility to Damage Credibility' The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading. "It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared. "Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy. A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."