The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
