The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "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 BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
