The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
