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The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.

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

"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."