Bad habits at the BBC - Returning to ‘last-first’ reporting on Gaza Strip incident

...Why the BBC finds it appropriate to amend an article in order to amplify a statement made by a campaigning political NGO renowned for its unreliability is unclear.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
02 October '13..





On October 1st 2013 a short report titled “Palestinian shot dead on Gaza-Israel border” appeared on the Middle East page of the BBC News website.

As is only too often the case, the headline reflects the last event in the sequence leading to the eventual outcome, as does the opening paragraph.

“A Palestinian was killed when Israeli troops opened fire on two Palestinians at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, Palestinian sources say.”

In the second paragraph readers are informed that:

“Israel said its soldiers had shot two men who had tried to damage a metal barrier, posing an “imminent danger”.” [emphasis added]

The ambiguous phrase “tried to damage a metal barrier” is unclear and misleading and does not adequately reflect the fact that the two were actually tampering with the border fence which separates the Gaza Strip from Israel and had already made a hole in it – hence an infiltration attempt was suspected. The fact that the two men were warned to move away from the fence but failed to do so is not reflected in this report and neither is the fact that local residents were instructed to remain in their homes whilst the incident was ongoing.

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