The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
