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The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry 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 previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Damage Trust'

The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."