🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Ofcom The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom. An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness". Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions. "As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided. "Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict." The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."