🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy". The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said. 'Potential to Erode Trust' The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared. "Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC. "This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."