The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
