The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog 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 earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
