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The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Potential to Erode Confidence'

The authority's report declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.

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

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."