The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
