🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy". The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Erode Confidence' The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading. "Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented. "Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. "This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."