The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
