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 offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
