🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness". Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Erode Trust' The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading. "This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented. "Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The film was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness. A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."