The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary 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 full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
