The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
