The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
