The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
