The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
