BBC Complaints corrects a factual error – eighteen months later

In March 2023 the BBC News website published a report by Anna Foster and David Gritten titled ‘Ban lifted on Israelis’ return to evacuated West Bank settlements’.

As we noted at the time, that report misled readers with inaccurate information concerning land ownership in the northern Shomron area.

BBC NEWS WEBSITE MISLEADS ON PRIVATE PALESTINIAN LAND

“The report’s opening lines inform readers that:

“Israel’s parliament has voted to allow Israeli citizens back into the sites of four settlements in the occupied West Bank which were evacuated at the time of the disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

There has been international criticism of the bill, as the settlements were built on what the High Court of Justice ruled was private Palestinian land.” 

That latter sentence is inaccurate. The court’s ruling actually related to just one of those four sites – Homesh. The other three communities which were evacuated in 2005, Sa-Nur, Ganim and Kadim, were not located on land privately owned by Palestinians.”

CAMERA UK submitted a complaint on that point to the BBC but did not receive any response whatsoever.

Eighteen months later, on September 24^th 2024, we received the following communication from BBC Complaints:

“Thank you for contacting the BBC about the article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-65024114

Thank you for highlighting the error in our article, which we have corrected.

We have also added a note at the bottom of the report to acknowledge that the article was corrected.

Thank you again for bringing this to our attention and we hope this resolves your concerns about the article.”

The amended part of the report now reads as follows:

“Israel’s parliament has voted to allow Israeli citizens back into the sites of four settlements in the occupied West Bank which were evacuated at the time of the disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

There has been international criticism of the bill, as one of the settlements was built on what the High Court of Justice ruled was private Palestinian land.”

Leaving aside the failure of the BBC’s reply to provide of any sort of explanation or apology for having not responded within anywhere near the BBC’s self-designated time-frame, it is notable that the footnote added to the report is dated simply “September 24”:

In other words, BBC audiences could be forgiven for concluding that the correction had been made ‘only’ six months after the inaccurate claim was published, rather than eighteen months later, as is actually the case.

The continued absence of a dedicated corrections page on the BBC News website of course means that while this belated correction may prevent any future readers of Foster and Gritten’s online report from being misled, it certainly does nothing to help those who read it at any time within the past year and a half to understand that they were given inaccurate information.

The point of making a correction is surely to ensure that BBC audiences receive the corrected information. So long as the BBC Complaints department continues to function at its current amateur level, it will remain clear to the BBC’s funding public that transparency is not its main priority.