Earlier this week we noted that a December 5th BBC ‘Newsround’ photo feature aimed at children aged 6 to 12 presented a photograph of a Christmas tree in Ramallah as having been taken “in Palestine”.
As we observed, the use of that terminology breaches the BBC Academy’s guide for journalists reporting on ‘Israel and the Palestinians’ and a complaint was submitted by BBC Watch on December 14th.
BBC’s ‘Newsround’ breaches BBC Academy style guide
On December 17th we received an email from BBC Complaints claiming that they were “unable to reply”.
“Thank you for contacting us about the BBC News website.
We regret that at present we’re unable to reply, unless we receive the URL to the article mentioned in your complaint.
Please contact us as you did before and include the above case reference number so we can pick up where we’ve left off.”
The relevant URL was in fact included in our complaint, as shown in the screenshot below:
However by the time that superfluous email from BBC Complaints was sent, the photo feature concerned had been amended and it now carries the date stamp December 16th.
Instead of the original seven photographs – three (42.8%) of which portrayed Christmas trees in areas ruled by either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas – the feature now carries eleven images: the original seven as well as additions from Belarus, Manchester, Moscow and El Salvador.
The caption to the photograph from Ramallah has been changed, with the word “Palestine” replaced by “the Middle East”.
However no footnote has been added to advise BBC audiences of the amendment.
