The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
