The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
