🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings. "As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said. 'Risk to Erode Confidence' The authority's announcement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided. "Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war." The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy. A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."