The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
