The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
