🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions. "As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Erode Trust' The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate. "Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared. "Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy. A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."