The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
