The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
