The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
