Guardian.co.uk took down Palestinian bomb video after 550 complaints

Posted by Patrick Smith on 18 February 2008 at 10:27
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Guardian.co.uk decided to remove a video news report of a Palestinian bomb attack on the Israeli town of Dimona, after more than 550 people complained of anti-Israeli bias.

The Guardian’s readers’ editor Siobhain Butterworth writes in her Open Door column that most people were annoyed that the video, made up of packaged footage and scripts from Reuters, did not contain any quotes or statements from the Israeli government or the Dimona community.

There was no comment, she says, because the Reuters footage didn’t contain any and the paper’s text coverage online and in the paper had responses from the Israeli prime minister, local doctors and a police spokesman.

The video, which contained an “editing mistake”, was removed four days after it was posted.

Butterworth notes that the Israel-Palestine conflict is “probably the most controversial subject covered by The Guardian”, a sentiment echoed by her predecessor Ian Mayes in a Press Gazette interview last year.

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