The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found 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 directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
