The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
