Earlier today we complained to Daily Express editors about an article (“Furious Benjamin Netanyahu attacks Western allies over Iran sanctions – ‘Where are you?'”, July 8th) with four separate sentences falsely suggesting that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital.
We pointed out that using Tel Aviv as a metonym for Israel creates the false impression that the city is the country’s capital, and that the Press Complaints Commission (the regulatory body for British newspapers and magazines that preceded IPSO) ruled in 2012 that it is wrong to do so.
To their credit, editors responded promptly, and took the rare step of removing the article from its website. Here’s what you now see when trying to open the link:
We’re not sure at this point if the article has been temporarily removed pending an edit, or if it was taken down for good. Either way, it marks a positive trend within the British media whereby editors are far less inclined than they used to be to defend the counterfactual assertion that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel.
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