🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious 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 ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The authority has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Undermine Credibility' The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading. "This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared. "Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness. A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."