The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
