The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
