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The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".

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

The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.

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

"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions 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 Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."