The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
