The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
