🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive". The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings. "As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said. 'Risk to Damage Trust' The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared. "Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. "This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, 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 complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."