The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "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 reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
