🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said. 'Possibility to Damage Confidence' The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive. "This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided. "Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC. "This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."