The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
