The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
