The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
