The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
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 documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
