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The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Erode Trust'

The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.

"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."