The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
