🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Says Ofcom The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate". The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its findings. "As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said. 'Risk to Erode Credibility' The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared. "Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. "This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness. A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."