🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy". The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions. "As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Undermine Confidence' The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate. "This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented. "Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster. "This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."