The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
