🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive". The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read. 'Risk to Damage Confidence' The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate. "Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared. "Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. "This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."