The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
