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The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".

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

The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."