The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
