🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said. 'Possibility to Undermine Confidence' The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided. "Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster. "This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza." The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness. A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."