The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
