The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
