The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
