The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
