The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
