13/6/22: Ofcom has rapped LBC News over a series of broadcasts in which a reporter referred to the Israeli Embassy in London as the “Jewish Embassy”.
The offending segment was broadcast three times across approximately two hours in May 2021, during an outbreak of violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict. In London, a major protest marched on the Israeli Embassy.
An LBC News staffer reporting from the protest said he was “About 40 metres down the road from… the Jewish Embassy”, that the protest had started at Hyde Park Corner “and then walked all the way here to the Jewish Embassy” and that “The Jewish Embassy’s gates are closed.” Another broadcast, approximately an hour before the first reference to “the Jewish Embassy”, had correctly referred to the location as the “Israeli Embassy”.
LBC News said the reporter “tripped over his words in error during the heat of the moment… from what was a stressful and tense situation” and that it had removed the programme from catch-up services upon realising the issue.
Ofcom determined LBC News had nonetheless breached Broadcasting Code rules on both due accuracy and avoiding offence: “The references to a ‘Jewish Embassy’ were an inaccurate description”, it said, and the reference to the “Israeli Embassy” in the earlier broadcast did not address the inaccuracy of the latter three.
The regulator added that the mistake was additionally significant because it “conflated Jewish people and the state of Israel as the focus of the protests… at a time of escalated conflict between Palestine and Israel and [when] reported attacks on Jewish people in London rose significantly”. Full ruling here.
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