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Wednesday 22 June 2011

The BBC still not quite there re the Jerusalem dog stoning story

Further to this I now see that the BBC have made this statement:
'Story removal

Nathalie Malinarich | 17:15 UK time, Wednesday, 22 June 2011

You may have noticed a headline in our "most popular" module about a dog being condemned to stoning in Israel. It was followed a few days later by a denial: Jerusalem court denies dog condemned by stoning. The first story has now been taken down. This is not a step we often take so I wanted to explain why we have done so on this occasion. We based our article on sources we have used in the past: Ynet, a popular Israeli website, and the news agency AFP. What we did not know when we wrote the story was that the Israeli Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv had already published a retraction and an apology. We failed to make the right checks. We should never have written the article and apologise for any offence caused. We have kept the story carrying the denial in the interests of transparency.

Nathalie Malinarich is world editor of the BBC News website.'

There are three problems with this. The first is that as of now (19:42 Thursday evening) the original story with its mealy mouthed update is still very much up on the BBC website despite the claim that 'The first story has now been taken down'. The second problem is that the wording of the follow-up article does not sufficiently explain the BBC's 'mistake'. The third problem is that taking the story down and putting an explanation in The Editors section is not sufficient. The original story was the most popular Middle East news story on Saturday and Sunday, many people were misled about Israel and Israelis and will not know that the story was wrong unless they find The Editors article. I would suggest that the retraction is placed as the lead Middle East story for at least two days so it is given at least the prominence that the BBC so oddly gave the original story.

The fact that the BBC were so willing to believe this story that showed Israel and Israelis in a bad light speaks volumes for the anti-Israel attitude that pervades the BBC. The BBC is institutionally anti-Israel and I believe the Balen report would have all but confirmed that, not that the BBC will ever let us read that report.

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"The fact that [people] were so willing to believe this story that showed Israel and Israelis in a bad light speaks volumes for the... fact that if people see the Israelis happily killing Palestinian people, they ain't going to be too surprised that they might mandate the stoning of a dog..."

If you stop treating people like dogs, then maybe people would be less willing to believe stories like this. Just a suggestion.