The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
