Complaint
This bulletin included a report on the vigil held in Tel Aviv to mark the hundredth day of the Israel-Gaza conflict. A viewer complained that the report gave an inaccurate impression of the number of civilians killed in Gaza by failing to make clear that the figure it quoted included combatants as well as civilians. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the ±«Óãtv’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
Approximately two minutes into the report, the reporter said “And the number of civilians killed in Gaza has been huge - very nearly 24,000 dead, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, many of them women and childrenâ€. A previous response to the complainant had transcribed the passage with a full stop after “h³Ü²µ±ð†and suggested it should be understood as two separate sentences conveying distinct thoughts. In the ECU’s judgement it was more probable that viewers would have heard the passage as a single sentence.  But even if a full stop were the correct punctuation, the passage gave the unintended impression that the figure from the Hamas-run Health Ministry consisted only of civilian dead, whereas it also included combatants, and the ECU thought this impression unlikely to have been counteracted by the reference in the studio introduction two minutes earlier to “more than 23,000 people†having been killed in Gaza. The result fell below the ±«Óãtv’s standards of accuracy.
Upheld
Further action
The programme team has been made aware of the finding, which has been reported to the Board of ±«Óãtv News.