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The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Trust'

The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.

"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, 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 complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."