🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading". The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Erode Credibility' The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive. "Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented. "Confidence is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."