The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
