The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
