The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
