🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness". The regulator has directed the BBC to air a evening statement about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading. "This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided. "Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."