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The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."