🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness". Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings. "As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said. 'Possibility to Undermine Trust' The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive. "This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented. "Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy. A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."