Over the past few weeks HonestReporting has achieved numerous corrections concerning articles that falsely implied that Tel Aviv was Israel’s capital.
When a request was sent to the Sydney Morning Herald to rectify the following paragraphs implying Tel Aviv to be Israel’s center of power and government, the response was a flat refusal to make any correction.
As well as launching a petition, we stated our intent to take this to the Australian Press Council if the SMH refused to back down.
We did exactly that and we succeeded. In an email to HonestReporting, the APC wrote:
In response to your concerns, we contacted the publication and it proceeded to remove references to Tel Aviv in the article and, where appropriate, replace it with “Israel”. As such, the Executive Director has decided not to refer the complaint for further consideration as the publication has sufficiently remedied the matter.
Our 2012 confrontation with The Guardian and the now defunct UK Press Complaints Commission over this very same issue created an important precedent for the UK media.
We expect this success to do the same for Australian media in the event that any future stories commit this Tel Aviv capital error.
Thank you to the thousands who signed our petition on this issue.
© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
