The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
