The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority 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 BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
