The public service broadcaster engaged in 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 official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom 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 earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
