Complaint
This article on the economic impact of the Gaza war, published on 24 April 2024 referred to a study which said Palestinians were losing the equivalent of $5.8bn a year from not being able to cross into Israel to work. A reader complained on the day of publication that it did so in terms which implied the figure represented income lost by Palestinians from Bethlehem only. BBC News acknowledged this implication was incorrect, and changed the article to make clear that the figure referred to workers from the whole of the occupied West Bank, adding a note on the reason for the change. Because of a series of oversights, however, the correction was not implemented until 18 November 2025 and not notified to the reader until 5 February 2026. The reader complained to the ECU that this did not meet the requirement of the BBC’s editorial guidelines on accuracy for mistakes to be corrected quickly and appropriately, and asked for a separate correction to be published with due prominence.
Outcome
The ECU noted that the potentially misleading form of words in the original article had remained online for approximately 19 months, and considered that the correction and explanatory note, while appropriate in their terms, had been too long delayed to be regarded as entirely resolving the issue of complaint. The complaint was therefore upheld. In the ECU’s judgement, the consequent publication of a summary of its finding on the complaints pages of bbc.co.uk would serve as a separate and duly prominent correction.
Upheld
