The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
