The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
