The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
