The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
