The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
