🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom. An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". The authority has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions. "As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read. 'Possibility to Damage Credibility' The regulator's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided. "Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster. "This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza." The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."