The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance 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 factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
