The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
