The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
