The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
