🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read. 'Risk to Erode Confidence' The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading. "Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented. "Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC. "This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."