The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
