BBC lists Israel's capital as J'lem after complaint

[dayag]

The fact that they recognize East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, but still refuse to accept even West Jerusalem for Israel's capital shows how out of touch with reality the BBC is.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev sent a letter to the Director of the BBC's Bureau in Israel, Paul Danahar on Thursday after the BBC Sport page failed to identify Israel's capital city as Jerusalem.

Until Wednesday afternoon, the page offering information about the Palestinian Olympic team referred to its capital as 'East Jerusalem', but the equivalent page for Israel made no mention of a capital city at all...

As a result of the controversy, the BBC added Jerusalem to Israel's country profile on Thursday afternoon, informing browsers that the "seat of government is Jerusalem" adding a disclaimer that "most foreign embassies reside in Tel Aviv."

Likewise, the Palestinian page stated that its “intended seat of government is East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as [the] administrative capital.”

source: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Ar...aspx?id=278181

[dayag]

The Guardian backpedals on the "Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel" claim.

The Guardian newspaper retracted its claim that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel after a watchdog group filed a lawsuit against Britain’s Press Complaints Commission...

The watchdog group HonestReporting filed a complaint with the UK Press Complaints Commission, which ruled that the newspaper could refer to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital and was not in breach of accuracy clauses.

HonestReporting then launched legal proceedings against the commission.

Under pressure from the commission, The Guardian issued a correction and changed its style guide. The correction does, however, assert that Israel’s designation of Jerusalem as its capital is not recognized by the international community.

The correction, issued Wednesday, read that “A correction to a picture caption said we should not have described Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. It went on to relay the advice in our style guide that the capital was Tel Aviv. In 1980 the Israeli Knesset enacted a law designating the city of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem, as the country’s capital. In response, the UN Security Council issued resolution 478, censuring the ‘change in character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem’ and calling on all member states with diplomatic missions in the city to withdraw. The UN has reaffirmed this position on several occasions, and almost every country now has its embassy in Tel Aviv. While it was therefore right to issue a correction to make clear Israel’s designation of Jerusalem as its capital is not recognized by the international community, we accept that it is wrong to state that Tel Aviv – the country’s financial and diplomatic centre – is the capital. The style guide has been amended accordingly.”...

source: http://forward.com/articles/160757/g...capital-claim/