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The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Damage Credibility'

The authority's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."