🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has directed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said. 'Potential to Damage Credibility' The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading. "Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared. "Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy. A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."