🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Ofcom The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions. "As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said. 'Potential to Damage Confidence' The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice'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 judgment of the presenter and the information he shared. "Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. "This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."