The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
