🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled 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 chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness". Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said. 'Potential to Undermine Credibility' The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading. "This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided. "Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza." The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."