Zimbabwe has suspended the BBC's press accreditation, accusing the corporation of broadcasting distorted reports about the country.
Rageh Omaar, a BBC foreign correspondent, was accused of bias in a report about the opening of parliament in Zimbabwe shown on BBC World.
The development means that the BBC is not able to send in any of its foreign correspondents, or to use its regular local producer. The corporation said it was working to restore the accreditation, but stood by Mr Omaar's report.
It is not the first time the government has targeted the BBC. In February, another correspondent, Mr Joseph Winter, was deported after the government accused him of unspecified criminal activities. However, officials later admitted that they were angered by the BBC's reporting in Zimbabwe.
Last month, Mr David Blair, a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, was also expelled, becoming the third foreign journalist to be forced from Zimbabwe this year.
In his BBC report, Mr Omaar said that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had "vowed to continue with the forcible acquisition of white farmland". The Information Minister, Mr Jonathan Moyo, said in the state-run Herald newspaper that Mr Mugabe had made it clear that white-owned farms were being acquired for landless blacks under the land reform laws.
"It is apparent that, as has happened before, the BBC approached the President's speech with a preconceived view to distorting it, to give a false impression that there is no law and order in Zimbabwe," Mr Moyo was quoted as saying.
But BBC sources said that Mr Omaar's report did not appear to have been inaccurate; courts have declared illegal the government's plan to nationalise about 4,500 mostly white-owned farms without paying compensation.
Mr Omaar left Harare for Britain on Tuesday as planned, and his two-man television crew returned on Wednesday to the BBC's base in South Africa. The BBC said that it would not be able to use its regular local producer while the accreditation was removed.
Visiting correspondents are required to hold government media approval to attend official events. All BBC accreditation was suspended "pending agreement, if at all possible, on an ethical and professional code of conduct", Mr Moyo said in a letter to Mr Milton Nkosi, the BBC's bureau chief in South Africa.
Mr Nkosi said that the BBC was disappointed with the decision. "We will certainly be discussing the situation with the Zimbabwe government to try to resolve it as soon as possible, and we certainly stand behind Rageh Omaar's report," he said.
Zimbabwe is suffering its deepest economic crisis since independence in 1980, worsened by political violence that human rights groups largely blame on ruling party militants. At least 36 people have died in the violence, much of it triggered by the illegal occupation of 1,700 white-owned farms by veterans from the struggle for independence.
Police have ignored several court rulings to remove the farm occupiers since March 2000.