The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
