The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
