The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, 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 the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
