The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance 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 factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
