The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
