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The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

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

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.

'Risk to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.

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

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."