The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
