The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
