The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a position 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 assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
