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The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Trust'

The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."