The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
