The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
