The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."