Complaint
The programme included an interview with the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski. Abdul Malik, a Green Party Councillor in Bristol, complained that the interviewer had put to Mr Polanski statements about him which were inaccurate and hence unfair – in particular, that he had shared a video of a Hamas Press Conference in which Israel was referred to as an “animal state” and that he had “appeared to suggest that it is not legitimate to be a Jew and that Israel as a state itself is not legitimate”. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of fairness.
Outcome
The ECU noted that the video in question, while containing a justification of the 9 October attacks which had been widely found offensive, did not contain material which justified the statements Mr Malik objected to. In view of the character of those statements, the ECU accepted that the interviewer’s citation of them had been unfair to him. However, it also noted BBC News had already acknowledged them to be inaccurate in correspondence with Mr Malik and, independently of the ECU’s investigation, had made one broadcast correction and two online corrections. The ECU considered that these, taken together, were sufficient for it to consider the issue of complaint to have been resolved.
Resolved
