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The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

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

Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Damage Confidence'

The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."