The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to 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 penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
