The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
