The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
