The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
