The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary 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 regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
