🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness". Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read. 'Possibility to Erode Trust' The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive. "Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided. "Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy. A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."