The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
