The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results 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 reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
