The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
