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The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined 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 corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.

"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.

"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."