The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
