The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry 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 already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
