The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
