The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
