The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 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 follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
