The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
