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The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.

'Potential to Erode Confidence'

The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.

"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

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