The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination 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 accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
