The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
