The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
