The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
