The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator 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 chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
