The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
