Despite there being to date no acknowledgement of the fact in the form of a footnote, an article dated August 13th which appears on the BBC News website has been amended.
The paragraph concerned in the article titled “Palestinian prisoners ‘moved’ before Israel release” now reads as follows: 
“The inmates, all convicted of murder or accessory to murder, were named by Israel’s prisons service shortly after midnight on Sunday, giving victims’ families 48 hours to submit legal challenges to the High Court.”
In the original version of the article the same paragraph referred to “The inmates, all convicted of attacks…”
Mr Raymond Solomon from Manchester made a complaint to the BBC, requesting that the wording be changed to reflect the fact that all the prisoners concerned had been convicted of murder or accessory to murder. Initially, the reply received from the BBC News website’s Middle East desk was less than satisfactory:
“We have reviewed the article in question and have amended the following sentence to read: ” The inmates, all convicted of attacks – many of them deadly – carried out before 1993, were named by Israel’s prisons service shortly after midnight on Sunday, giving victims’ families 48 hours to submit legal challenges to the High Court.” “
Mr Solomon did not find this acceptable and wrote back to the BBC to demand that the language used accurately reflect the known facts. The BBC News website’s Middle East desk accepted Mr Solomon’s point, with the result that the wording was eventually amended again to read as above.
Having therefore acknowledged that its original wording in that article was not sufficiently accurate, it would of course be appropriate for the BBC to likewise amend other items appearing on its website in which the same wording appears – such as this one.
