The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results 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 expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
