The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary 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 agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
