The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
