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The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.

'Potential to Undermine Confidence'

The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."