The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high 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 the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
