The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
