đź”— Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The authority has directed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its decisions. "As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated. 'Possibility to Erode Confidence' The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate. "This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared. "Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza." The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."