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The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.

"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.

"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results 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 aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."