🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said. 'Risk to Erode Confidence' The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate. "Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented. "Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."