The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
