🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions. "As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The authority's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented. "Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."