The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
