🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions. "As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said. 'Risk to Damage Confidence' The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading. "This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided. "Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This error had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."