The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error 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 agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
