The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
