🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Damage Trust' The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading. "It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided. "Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness. A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."