The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
