🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness". The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 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: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive. "Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided. "Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy. A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."