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The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Undermine Trust'

The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."