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The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Credibility'

The authority's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

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