The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core 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 possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
