The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
