The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
