The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling 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 corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
