The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
