The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
