🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive". The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its decisions. "As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said. 'Risk to Erode Trust' The authority's report stated: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading. "It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared. "Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC. "This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness. A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 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 adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."