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The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.

'Risk to Erode Credibility'

The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.

"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."