The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
