The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
