The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government 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 content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
