The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, 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 the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
