The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
