The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
