The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
