Following National Public Radio’s (NPR) removal of an illustrative map that included “Palestine” in place of Israel, Elizabeth Jensen, NPR’s ombudsman has explained how the errors came to be, citing HonestReporting’s role:
The map portion of the illustration had a number of mistakes, the most notable being that Israel was labeled as “Palestine.” There were other errors, as well, as an editor’s note details. After the online pro-Israel publication HonestReporting posted a report that focused on the exclusion of Israel, critical emails began coming in. NPR’s editors moved swiftly to remove the map Sunday evening, as they should have.
I asked Marc Silver, the blog’s editor, how the errors came about. He told me by email: “The artist doing the illustration for this post added the map element. It was one of many elements in his illustration depicting what world travelers perceive as potential risks when they are abroad. We should have carefully reviewed each map label for inaccuracies and omissions and failed to do so.”
NPR has worked with the illustrator, Patric Sandri, once before and his portfolio includes work for The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and Bloomberg News, among others, Silver said. He added that Sandri used his own sources for the map but NPR takes “responsibility for these errors because of our failure to check the map carefully.”
I heard back from an apologetic Sandri Tuesday. He said by email that, “it was not my political intention to draw the map that way at all,” calling it a mistake that happened because “I had a very short time for creating the illustration. If you work under time pressure mistakes can happen.” He added that he was surprised that the NPR staff did not catch the mistakes themselves, and said they should have double-checked, as well; “They approved everything and really liked the illustration. I only had to change small details.”
The illustrator did not catch the errors. NPR’s editors did not catch the errors. But HonestReporting did thanks to our readers, in yet another textbook example of how we can achieve success together.
We received a tip-off from a reader, Olivia [please contact us and let us know your details so we can award you a Watchdog of the Week!], through our Red Alert page, allowing us to expose the error-strewn map to a wider audience. Only a short time later, following complaints from HonestReporting and many of the readers mentioned in Elizabeth Jensen’s article, the map was removed.
Thanks to coverage in media outlets such as The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Algemeiner, Israel National News and Breitbart News, NPR found itself the object of some unwanted publicity.
We commend NPR’s ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen for her efficiency and transparency in addressing the issue, the second time in recent months that she has directly addressed HonestReporting’s readers, crediting them with holding NPR to account.
Thank you again to our readers who helped achieve this latest success.
