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The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

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

The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Potential to Undermine Confidence'

The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.

"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."