The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
