The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
