The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
