The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme 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, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
