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The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Undermine Credibility'

The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."