RSS
The Laughable Excuses Given by the BBC & CNN for Israel Capital City Mistake
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA.
There’s chutzpah, and then there’s the BBC’s explanation for why it should be allowed to incorrectly describe Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital — an explanation so absurd and convoluted it borders on farce.
Now, the BBC isn’t alone in its arrogant insistence that it gets to decide the capital city of a country 2,500 miles away from its London headquarters.
We’ve long been amazed at the sheer ignorance of journalists who seemingly believe that misinforming their readers about Israeli geography and governance will magically solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But most media outlets we catch making this error will eventually correct the record. Take The Guardian, for example, which, after some back-and-forth with HonestReporting, agreed to make four amendments last month to stories that erroneously called Tel Aviv the capital.
Rarely will a news organization dig in its heels quite as much as the publicly-funded British Broadcasting Corporation, which is mounting a Herculean defense of what it has apparently deemed is its divine right to keep making the same mistake.
Indeed, the mental gymnastics the BBC performs to justify its repetitive error are so laughably ludicrous that we had no choice but to put them on display here in all their cringe-inducing glory.
A brief background.
On April 20, HonestReporting complained to the broadcaster over a segment aired the day before on BBC Radio4’s The Now Show, featuring Steven Punt and Hugh Dennis, who ended the show by referring to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital.
On the last ever episode of @BBCRadio4 The Now Show, Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis end by inaccurately referring to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel. It was Jerusalem when your show first aired in 1998, and it’s Jerusalem still. pic.twitter.com/SzuJvNILaH
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 19, 2024
Five days later on April 25, the BBC’s complaints team responded simply to say that while it does “report that Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital, this isn’t widely recognized by the international community, with most foreign embassies being in Tel Aviv.”
We appealed, pointing out first, that the BBC had not reported in that segment that Israel claims its capital is Jerusalem, and second, that the international community’s recognition, or indeed lack thereof, does not change material reality.
For over a month, we heard nothing.
And then, on the last day of May, we finally understood why it took the BBC so long to respond. The email we received was nothing short of a masterclass in crafting complete nonsense.
After first assuring us that our “concerns” had been raised with senior managers at Radio 4, we were told the following:
In this comedy programme, the presenter made a passing reference to Iran’s launching of drones against Israel. Diplomatically, it is clear that Iran considers it was retaliating against Tel Aviv, as evidenced by the Iranian government billboard unveiled around the same time with the slogan “Tel Aviv is our battleground, not Tehran.”
It continued:
In this context, as a passing reference in a comedy programme where the audience would not expect an explanation of the differing views on the status of Jerusalem, we consider that the line ‘Tehran retaliated directly against Tel Aviv…’ was a reflection of the news events of the week with Iran’s position on its dispute, rather than a suggestion that the BBC considers Tel Aviv to be the capital city.
Let’s break this down for those who aren’t quite as seasoned as we are at unraveling the BBC’s peculiar spin.
The broadcaster is arguing that listeners of its Radio 4 comedy show should have known — from a story published on its website — that billboards in Iran contained threats to launch missiles at Tel Aviv.
Aware of this, listeners should have, according to the BBC, known that “diplomatically, it is clear that Iran considers it was retaliating against Tel Aviv.”
Of course, there is a good reason that Iran “considers” it was retaliating against Tel Aviv: the Islamist regime doesn’t even recognize the State of Israel, let alone its capital, preferring to call it the “Zionist entity.”
It’s nice to know that the BBC takes its editorial guidance from the mullahs in Iran.
And now CNN.
Like the BBC, CNN also tried to defend a capital city error in one of its pieces, albeit with less imagination.
This month, we noted that an opinion piece by Peter Bergen had used Tel Aviv as a synonym when describing the announcement of a peace proposal made in Washington by US President Joe Biden.
The same way the peace plan was unveiled in the US capital Washington DC, so if it were to have been unveiled in Israel, it would have come from Jerusalem, the Israeli seat of government and its capital, not in Tel Aviv. 2⃣ pic.twitter.com/RqYnNooQDx
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 2, 2024
This time, CNN argued that the Israeli government is “active in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,” which it said was evidenced by the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu had recently held press conferences in Tel Aviv.
We were then told an update to the piece saying that the proposal “wasn’t announced in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv is appropriate.”
By this reasoning, if Joe Biden were to hold a press conference in say, Chicago, for example, one could argue it should be given capital city status.
While the reasoning given by both outlets was so silly it was almost comedic, the two incidents have further exposed a widespread shift during this latest Israel-Hamas war in which journalists have abandoned impartiality, morphing into journalists-cum-activists.
Lastly, even if we were to accept that Jerusalem was not identified in stories as Israel’s capital, there is still no good reason why Tel Aviv should be mentioned in such stories, ever.
Tel Aviv is not, nor has it ever been, Israel’s capital.
We intend to continue trudging through the BBC’s convoluted complaints process and will escalate further if necessary. Watch this space.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post The Laughable Excuses Given by the BBC & CNN for Israel Capital City Mistake first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Benjamin Netanyahu was burned in effigy on the streets of Montreal during a Friday night riot
Justin Trudeau condemned for subsequently attending a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto.
The post Benjamin Netanyahu was burned in effigy on the streets of Montreal during a Friday night riot appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
Report: IDF targets Hezbollah chief in Beirut
Illustrative. Smoke billows over Beirut’s southern suburbs after an Israeli strike, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Hadath, Lebanon October 19, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
JNS.org – A massive explosion in a building in Beirut on Saturday killed 11 people and wounded dozens in what Arab media said was a failed Israeli attempt to kill Hezbollah’s head of operations, Muhammad Haydar.
Israel did not immediately claim responsibility specifically for the explosion early on Saturday in the eight-story building in the Lebanese capital’s Basta neighborhood. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said only that Israel struck an unspecified target in Beirut, the fourth strike in the city in a week.
Basta is situated in the city’s center. The bulk of Israel’s strikes in Beirut have been in the Dahiyeh neighborhood, a Hezbollah stronghold in the city’s south.
Lebanese media reported that at least 63 people were wounded in the strike.
Avihai Edraei, the head of the Arabic-language department of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, posted a tweet on X on Saturday calling on residents of Dahiyeh to evacuate their homes. They are living near Hezbollah installations, he said, against which “the IDF will act in the near future.”
The targets of Saturday’s strikes “were located by Hezbollah in the heart of the civilian population. Prior to the attack, many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians,” the IDF wrote in a statement. A headquarters, a weapons depot, “and additional Hezbollah terror infrastructures” were attacked, the statement said.
According to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, Israel has killed 2,450 terrorists in Lebanon and Syria. Lebanese health authorities said that 3,365 people have died in strikes by Israel. Those data do not distinguish between terrorists and civilians. On the Israeli side, terrorists have killed 121 people, with 76 of them being soldiers.
The post Report: IDF targets Hezbollah chief in Beirut first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Troubling Details Emerge About Disappearance of Chabad Rabbi, Inaction of UAE Authorities
Zvi Kogan. Photo: LinkedIn via i24 News
i24 News – i24NEWS learned chilling details about the disappearance of Chabad emissary Zvi Kogan, who went missing last week in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Kogan did not show up for scheduled meetings he had during the day. After he failed to make contact, his wife contacted the security officer of the Chabad house, who alerted the local authorities. Information about the incident was also shared with the Israeli authorities.
Kogan disappeared from a location about an hour and a half from Dubai. i24NEWS can report that complaints were made to both the Dubai Police and the Abu Dhabi Police on Thursday, yet no actions were taken by either.
i24NEWS also became privy to the information that although Kogan’s car got a speeding ticket on its way to Oman, in this case too the authorities in the Emirates and Oman did nothing.
i24NEWS can also confirm that there is tremendous anger in Israel at the Emiratis, who did not respond to the suspicious signs and did not act in time. In fact, actions were only taken after the intervention of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
The story has troubling echoes of the abduction by Iranians of German-Iranian dissident Jamshid Sharmahd; he was kidnapped from Dubai to Iran via Oman and was eventually executed.
The post Troubling Details Emerge About Disappearance of Chabad Rabbi, Inaction of UAE Authorities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login