A news article at the Independent (“India expresses support for ‘just Palestine cause’ at UN”, May 17), by Maroosha Muzaffar, included the following:
“In India, some right-wing trolls had been trying to trend #IndiaWithIsrael on Twitter. India’s statement at the UNSC virtual meet comes as a surprise to them.”
This sentence referring to Indians who are pro-Israel in the pejorative at “right-wing trolls”, we argued in our complaint to editors, clearly runs afoul of the prohibition in the Editors’ Code against blurring news with opinion. If the journalist’s hatred of Israeli is such that she considers anyone supporting the state on Twitter a “troll”, we added, she’s entitled to feel that way or even to frame the debate over Israel and the Palestinians in that manner in an op-ed.
But such egregious bias, we concluded, should never bleed into a straight news article.
Our complaint was ultimately upheld, and the sentence revised thusly:
In India, some people had been trying to trend #IndiaWithIsrael on Twitter. India’s statement at the UNSC virtual meet comes as a surprise to them.
The following editor’s note was added to the article:
