The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
