The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
