The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
