The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
