The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
