The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
