The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
