The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
