The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
