The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
