🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, States Ofcom The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Undermine Credibility' The authority's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive. "This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared. "Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict." The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. 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 documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."