The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
