The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
