The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
