The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing 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 investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, 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 authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
