The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance 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 factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
