The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
