The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to 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 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
