The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
