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The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Confidence'

The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.

"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."