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The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.

"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.

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

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

The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."