The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
