The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
