🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its findings. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read. 'Possibility to Damage Confidence' The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared. "Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness. A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."