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The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, 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 programme was "substantially inaccurate".

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

The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.

"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."