🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read. 'Possibility to Damage Trust' The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading. "Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared. "Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war." The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness. A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."