The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
