The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
