The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
