The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
