🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its findings. "Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said. 'Risk to Erode Confidence' The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading. "Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided. "Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."