The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
