The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
