The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
