🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated. 'Potential to Damage Credibility' The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate. "This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided. "Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. "This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza." The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness. A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."