The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
