🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading". The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read. 'Potential to Damage Trust' The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading. "It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided. "Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness. A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."