The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
