🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions. "As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said. 'Potential to Erode Credibility' The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented. "Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC. "This error had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."