The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
