The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
