🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom. An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading". The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness". The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its findings. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said. 'Possibility to Erode Credibility' The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive. "This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared. "Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC. "This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war." The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."