The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
