Last month we noted that a report by BBC East Midlands which appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Leicester’ page on March 28th included the claim that al Aqsa is “a holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews”.
BBC EAST MIDLANDS FAILS YET AGAIN IN ‘PALESTINE ACTION’ REPORT
CAMERA UK submitted a complaint to the BBC pointing out that the BBC’s style guide states that Temple Mount should be referred to as such and “should also be described, though not necessarily in the first four pars, as known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif “.
We noted that al Aqsa is the name of a mosque at the site – not the title of the entire site – and that in contrast to the inaccurate claim in the report, Jews do not ‘revere’ al Aqsa: for Jews the holy site is Temple Mount.
On April 6th we received a reply from BBC Complaints informing us that it would take more time to address our complaint. On April 12th we received a response from the BBC News website:
“Thank you for getting in touch about our article Arrests at pro-Palestinian Leicester drone factory protest.
You’re quite right and we have removed “al-Aqsa” from the sentence.
Please accept our apologies for the oversight and thank you for bringing this to our attention.”
The amended paragraph now refers to:
“…a holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews.”
However, our complaint also drew attention to the fact that the same inaccuracy appeared in a previous report dating from August 2021. Despite acknowledging the error, the BBC News website has yet to correct that earlier report.
“Ignorant” and “stupid” are appropriate words to describe this lazy crew.