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The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."