BBC still touting problematic backgrounder for children

The BBC News website’s recent article promoting Hamas claims concerning a man murdered last week in Tunisia (previously discussed here) included three links to ‘related articles’ presumably intended to enhance audience understanding of the story.

newsround-art-link-in-sfax-art

The second of those links – billed “A simple guide to the Gaza conflict” – leads to a backgrounder produced by the CBBC website’s ‘Newsround’ section for children between the ages of six and twelve. newsround-gaza 

Titled “Guide: Why are Israel and the Palestinians fighting over Gaza?“, that rather curious choice of ‘related article’ was originally published in November 2012 and was the subject of a complaint and a ruling by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit  in June 2013.

Despite having been amended numerous times, the backgrounder still includes misleading, inaccurate and incomplete information – as was documented here in 2014. At the time we noted that:

“Incidents such as the recent bout of conflict often prompt increased pondering of the topic of why so many educated people in Western countries exhibit a disturbing lack of factual knowledge with regard to Israel. With CBBC apparently reaching 34% of six to twelve year-olds weekly in the UK and its website having a million unique browsers a month, items such as this inaccurate and misleading ‘Newsround’ guide are clearly aiding to perpetuate that situation whilst failing young audience members and their licence fee-paying parents by neglecting  the BBC’s obligation to promote “understanding of international issues”. 

However, as we see, this problematic “guide” continues to be promoted to BBC audiences around the world.

 

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