Complaint
A viewer complained that insufficient action had been taken to remedy the bias apparent in the statement, put by the presenter to the former Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett, that the Israeli military were “happy to kill children”. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of impartiality.
Outcome
The statement referred to Israel’s recent military action in Jenin in which a number of younger people had been killed by Israeli forces, so it related to a legitimate area of enquiry. The ECU accepted that, as phrased, the statement might have given viewers the impression that they were hearing the presenter’s personal view on a controversial matter, and that it therefore fell below the BBC’s standards of impartiality. However, BBC News had already acknowledged a problem with the interview in a posting on the Corrections and Clarifications page of bbc.co.uk which described the presenter’s comment as inappropriate and not well phrased, and the ECU considered this sufficient to resolve the issue of complaint.
Resolved