The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
