🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Says Ofcom The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness". The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said. 'Risk to Damage Confidence' The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he provided. "Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness. A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."