The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
