The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film 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 regulator has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
