The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
