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The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Damage Credibility'

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

"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.

"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."