The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
