The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
