The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
