The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
