The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
