The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
