The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
