🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". The authority has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Undermine Confidence' The authority's announcement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared. "Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster. "This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict." The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."