The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
