The Independent Refuses to Budge on ‘Arab Jaffa’

On September 17, The Independent published a story on the Israeli elections where members of the voting public were asked for their opinions on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It included the following:

In the Arab neighbourhood of Jaffa, Eliran Ben Iolo, 32, another Blue and White supporter, agreed: “It feels like it’ll work, because Bibi’s already lost it. Now you see he’s throwing all kinds of punches, not smartly and not with any kind of understanding.”

We contacted The Independent to point out that Jaffa’s Arab population is approximately 31% i.e. it has a Jewish majority and is not an ‘Arab neighborhood.’

An easily corrected error. Or so we thought.

In an email to HonestReporting, The Independent responded:

The article was not making a claim that Jaffa is a predominantly Arab neighbourhood. It simply sought to explain that the individual being interviewed was in a neighbourhood within Jaffa, which is predominantly Arab.

We followed up pointing out that the article text refers to the neighborhood,  not a neighborhood, implying Jaffa to be one geographical entity. If it is one geographical entity then it is demographically around 70% Jewish. The Independent’s ‘clarification’ may have been understandable if the article text matched its explanation. But it does not.

There’s a simple solution: Either remove the word “Arab” from “Arab neighbourhood” or accurately describe it as “mixed Jewish-Arab neighbourhood.”

With all these possibilities, you’d think that The Independent would do the right thing.

Wrong again.

This time, The Independent responded:

In any event, the article was a report of the reaction by several Israeli voters to the outcome of the recent election; the focus of the article was on their views, not where they lived. As the point in dispute in your complaint is not a significant one in the context of the article, I see no basis why we would be required to issue a correction to our article in this instance.

Given that the average Independent reader may well believe that all of Israel should be an Arab state, we believe that erroneously stating that Jewish-majority towns or cities within Israel are predominantly Arab warrants a correction.

That The Independent believes that the point in dispute “is not a significant one in the context of the article” and is actively refusing to make a simple correction speaks volumes about that media outlet.