The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
