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The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Damage Credibility'

The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.

"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."