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The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

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

Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance 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 factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."