🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said. 'Potential to Erode Credibility' The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading. "Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided. "Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster. "This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."