The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
