The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
