The BBC News website provides its visitors with ‘country profiles’ which include a section titled “Facts”. Here are some examples, beginning with an old capital:
Here is a more recently designated capital:
A country’s capital city is usually the one in which its official seat of government is located, although the Netherlands is one example of an exception to that rule of thumb. But in any case, a capital is of course defined by the people of a particular country and their government, rather than by media organisations apparently having chronic difficulties with post-colonialism.
It might perhaps be suggested that the BBC’s stubborn and anachronistic refusal to name Israel’s capital city as such is related to a reluctance to be seen as taking a stance on the issue of ‘disputed territory’ – even though the district of the city in which the seat of government is located is not in fact ‘disputed’. Well, obviously not.
So if any of our readers happen to bump into a BBC reporter wandering the streets of Jerusalem, they might like to point him or her in the direction of the building pictured below.
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