đŸ”— Share this article BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading". The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy". The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read. 'Potential to Erode Credibility' The authority's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading. "Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided. "Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster. "This error had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict." The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."