The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
