🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness". Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Undermine Trust' The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate. "This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared. "Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."