🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority 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 chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said. 'Potential to Undermine Trust' The authority's report said: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided. "Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. "This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."