The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
