🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness". Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said. 'Potential to Undermine Credibility' The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading. "This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared. "Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."