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The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

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

The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.

"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."