The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
