The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
