The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme 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 corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
