🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Ofcom The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness". Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said. 'Possibility to Damage Confidence' The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive. "This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented. "Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict." The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."