The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
