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The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Damage Credibility'

The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.

"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."