The British broadcaster 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 representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
