The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
