The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
