The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
