The Guardian newspaper and Israel (update)

It seems that The Guardian just can't help itself, following on from my piece yesterday about Denis MacEoin's letter itemising The Guardian's anti-Israel bias I see that they have been at it again. This time its in its reporting of the ridiculous decision to award Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, despite him achieving nothing in this field (yet) and the award being decided less than a month after his inauguration. The JC broke the story thus:

"The Guardian has helpfully printed a list of “everyone who has ever won the nobel peace prize”.

The source is, apparently, Nobelprize.org.
They do have a full list of all winners."

- I have published the two relevant parts of The Guardian's list at the top of this article, can you spot who's missing?

The Guardian have tried to explain the omission of Menachem Begin (Israel) as joint winner in 1978 and Yitzhak Rabin & Shimon Peres (Israel) as (joint) joint winners in 1994 thus:

"(it was down to a) technical issue during the data transfer from the site, which meant that many of the names of the joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize were accidentally omitted, although the country of origin of the winners was not."

Really, how odd that this technical issue missed just two entries, both Israeli, one from the second column and one from the first column. I simply do no believe The Guardian's explanation.

There are several people who pointed out The Guardian's "odd" omissions in the comments that followed the original article and it is left to SimonRogers to explain:

"Hi all

It's my fault, I'm afraid. I decided where there was more than one winner to put the joint one in the second column. Unfortunately, this caused a few problems, which we've now rectified.

Please let me know if you spot any other missing names."

People are not convinced, here's a few reactions:

"Thanks for coming clean Simon.

Still strikes me as odd that anyone could look at a list that includes De Klerk AND Mandela on one line and then, on the very next line, Arafat on his own and not think there was something very wrong."

"Unfortunately, this caused a few problems

Only with the Israeli ones, eh? Very specific problem, that."

"

Simon then tries to explain away the omissions:

"Actually, we also missed John Raleigh Mott, The Quakers and the League of Red Cross Societies.To make matters worse, some of you may have noticed a java error on the page which meant we didn't see the comments until after 4pm. Sorry, but there it is. If you spot anything else, let me know."

But I still don't buy it; The Guardian has form when it comes to decrying Israel and this looks too convenient.



Note: The Guardian has updated its report to show the correct winners.