The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
