The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
