The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
