The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
