The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
