The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
