The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
