The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
