🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy". The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read. 'Risk to Erode Trust' The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate. "Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared. "Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza." The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy. A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results 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 reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."