The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
