The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
