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The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

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

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

"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.

'Risk to Damage Credibility'

The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This failing had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."