The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
