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The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.

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

"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."