The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
