The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
