The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
