🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared. "Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."