The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential 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 film was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
