🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its findings. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read. 'Risk to Damage Credibility' The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided. "Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance 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 truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."