🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive". The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions. "As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said. 'Possibility to Erode Trust' The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented. "Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster. "This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."