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The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Confidence'

The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A corporation official 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 corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."