The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
