The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance 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 corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
