🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness". The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided. "Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This error had the potential to damage 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 online platform in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."