The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
