Welcome to our new monthly roundup of the corrections and successes that HonestReporting has achieved.
November has been a phenomenal month with 20 significant corrections, including some high-profile cases summarized below.
Google and Oxford Dictionary’s ‘Jew’ Issues
When the term European was typed into Google Translate, the Definitions section gave examples of the adjective and noun:
“We Europeans may take Palestinian land to give it to former European inhabitants, the Jews.”
“He compares the Palestinians at the time to Native Americans when Europeans first showed up in North America.”
It was also discovered that the definition of Jew gave the following offensive example of its use as a verb:
“bargain with someone in a miserly or petty way.”
After HonestReporting contacted Google, these definitions were swiftly removed.
We also traced the source of these definitions to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary. After correspondence with Oxford University Press, the offensive example sentences were removed from the dictionary definition of European.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
CNN Sexual Harassment Map: Israel an Arab State
CNN’s feature article on global sexual harassment included a map highlighting Arab states. Israel was also highlighted as an Arab state.
Following HonestReporting’s intervention, the map was changed and a correction issued.
HR reader Michael Mendelsohn was awarded our Watchdog of the Week for bringing the map to our attention.
BBC Erases Jews from Ancient Israel
A BBC Travel story on the Israeli port city of Caesarea mentioned its ancient history, referring to Phoenicians and Greeks and eventually the Romans. It wrongly referred to the city as the capital of “Roman Palestine” rather than Judea and, referring to an uprising of the “native people” who revolted against Roman rule between 66 and 70 AD, failed to mention that those people were the Jews.
HonestReporting got the correction.
HR reader Joel Schneider was recognized as a Watchdog of the Week for spotting the errors and letting HonestReporting know about them.
A Not So Priti Headline Fail
After Israel was unwittingly dragged into a political controversy involving a British politician’s meetings with Israeli officials while on vacation, The Guardian’s headline made a disgraceful insinuation that the politician had “wanted to send aid money to the IDF.”
In fact, an idea had been floated and then rejected that UK aid money could be channeled through the IDF’s Golan Heights field hospital for humanitarian efforts aimed at casualties of the Syrian civil war.
The Guardian changed its headline following HonestReporting’s protests.
The Times’s IDF ‘Agent’
When referring to a disrupted talk given on a UK campus by pro-Israel activist Hen Mazzig, The Times of London referred to him as a “former Israeli Defence Force agent.”
In this context, the word “agent,” whose dictionary definitions include someone taking part in undercover activities, including espionage, takes on a sinister tone.
Members of the IDF are normally referred to as… soldiers.
In response to HonestReporting’s tweet demanding a correction, Mazzig himself tweeted the journalist demanding an apology. As a result of these interventions, the text was changed to the more appropriate “officer.”
Palestinian ‘Ambassadors’ and ‘Embassies’
Numerous western states, including the US and UK do not recognize Palestinian statehood. Palestinian diplomatic representatives in those countries do not have the status of ambassadors with recognized embassies. Unfortunately, many media outlets gave a unilateral diplomatic upgrade to Palestinian representatives until HonestReporting intervened.
We achieved corrections from The Independent (twice), Haaretz, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Times of London.
Capital Errors
There were the usual media references to Tel Aviv, implying that it, rather than Jerusalem, is Israel’s capital city. HonestReporting achieved corrections from The Times of London, International Business Times and Daily Telegraph.
Balfour Declaration: ‘State’ or ‘Homeland’?
The Independent wrongly stated that the Balfour Declaration expressed support for a Jewish state. HonestReporting pointed out that, in fact, the Declaration referred not to a state but a Jewish homeland. The Independent corrected the error.
The Guardian’s ‘Regime’ Change
Regime is a word usually reserved for the worst Middle East dictatorships. So why did The Guardian refer to the “Israeli regime?”
Following HonestReporting’s complaint, The Guardian issued a correction and changed regime to government.
An Israeli Arab Singer From ‘Palestine?’
The Irish Times published a story about Israeli Arab singer in Dublin. Photo captions referred to her as “a singer from Palestine.”
Following HonestReporting’s complaints, a photo caption was changed to refer to “a singer from Nazareth,” while the original caption was removed in its entirety from a second photo.
HR Française
Our French-language affiliate has also been correcting the record.
In a Le Figaro article about the Balfour Declaration’s centenary, the newspaper’s Israel correspondent made several historical mistakes regarding the timeline of the Zionist movement that reflected negatively on Israel. We exposed these, which resulted in Le Figaro amending the text.
HonestReporting monitors an enormous number of media outlets around the world but we still need your help. Let us know if you see something that deserves our attention by contacting us through our Red Alert page or clicking on the button here and maybe you can be our next Watchdog of the Week.
Here’s how you can make a difference.
