The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
