The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
