The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
