The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
