🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The regulator's statement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate. "Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented. "Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war." The film was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."