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The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.

"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."