The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination 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 reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
