The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
