The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
