The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
