The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
