🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". The regulator has directed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read. 'Possibility to Erode Credibility' The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented. "Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."