The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
