The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
