The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
