The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
