The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
