The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
