The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
