The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
