The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
