The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
