The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled 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, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
