The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
