The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
