Readers may recall that last October BBC Arabic corrected five out of ten reports which erroneously referred to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel. Nevertheless, those corrections did not bring about a substantial change in editorial policy and soon after they were made, yet another report was published with the exact same error.
Following our post on the matter in November, two more false references to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel appeared in late December 2020 and early January 2021.
Later in January – after several reminders from CAMERA Arabic – BBC Arabic finally adhered to its own previous editorial decision not to refer to the Israeli government as “Tel Aviv”. It corrected all the remaining seven reports published between July 2020 and January 2021 that included the inaccuracy, bringing the total number of corrections on that issue to twelve.
BBC Arabic editors also assured CAMERA Arabic that “internal actions” were taken with the journalists who edited the reports in question and that “a reminder to all staff” about the outlet’s impartiality guidelines was subsequently sent.
BBC Arabic hence joins a growing list of media outlets which acknowledge that Tel Aviv is not the capital of Israel.
The other Arabic language ones among them are American stations CNN Arabic and Al-Hurra, and German Deutsche Welle. Additional outlets include the BBC in English and Spanish, Newsweek (US), Haaretz (Israel), AFP (France), India Today (India), the Independent (UK), the Times of London (UK), the Guardian (UK) and the Los Angeles Times.
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BBC ARABIC PARTLY CORRECTS REFERENCES TO TEL AVIV AS THE CAPITAL OF ISRAEL
“بي بي سي عربي” تصحح إشارتها الخاطئة إلى تل أبيب على أنها عاصمة إسرائيل