🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness". The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions. "As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Undermine Trust' The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate. "This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared. "Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster. "This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy. A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."