The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
