The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement 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 reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
