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The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.

"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."