The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
