The public service 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 son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
