The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust 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 oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
