The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
