🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions. "As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate. "Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided. "Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza." The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."