The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
