The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 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 sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
