🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading". The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings. "As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated. 'Possibility to Damage Credibility' The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared. "Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness. A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."