The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
