Reuters Corrects Six Day War Jerusalem Infographic

As noted in CAMERA’s Snapshots blog earlier this week:

Reuters marks the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War with an infographic in English, French and Spanish which explicitly states that east Jerusalem “is home to Islam’s third holiest site,” but which ignores the fact that the area is also home to Judaism’s holiest sites. The Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, and the nearby Western Wall is the holiest site where Jewish prayer is permitted.

 
The influential wire service also supplied the same tilted graphic in Spanish and French:
 
 
Meanwhile, eagle-eyed Twitter user Yosef Kutner astutely noted that the image’s Jerusalem population graph falsely shows that there were no Arabs in Jerusalem in the years 1948 and 1967. Among Reuters’ cited sources is the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. For the years 1948 and 1961, both sources do indeed cite low figures for the Arab population because they provide figures for the number of Arabs in the part of Jerusalem under Israel control only – not for all of Jerusalem. (In 1948, according to JIIS, 1,100 Arabs lived in Jerusalem neighborhoods under Israeli control, and by 1961 that figure reached 2,400 Arabs. The CBS does not provide any figure for Arabs in Jerusalem in 1948.)
 
But the Reuters graphic does not make clear that the figures it provides for 1948 and 1961 only reflect the number of Arabs living in the Israeli-controlled part of Jerusalem. The heading refers only to “Jerusalem population,” without any qualification that during the years of 1948 and 1961, the terms were changed. News consumers would wrongly conclude from this that no Arabs lived in Jerusalem in 1948 and 1961, when in fact over 65,000 Arabs lived in the city during those years, when the eastern part was under Jordanian control.
 
CAMERA’s Israel office contacted Reuters about these issues, and as a result Reuters commendably issued this corrected graphic.

 
Improvements to the amended graphic include the addition of the following information:

For Israelis, all the of the city is the eternal and indivisible capital the Jews prayed for through 2,000 years in exile, home to the Western Wall and Judaism’s holiest site.

In addition, regarding the city’s Arab population for the years 1948 and 1961, the chart still shows zero Arabs, but now includes the explanatory note:

Figures for 1948 and 1961 only reflect the number of Arabs living in the Israeli-controlled part of Jerusalem, while at least 65,000 Arabs lived in the city during those years, when the eastern part was under Jordanian control.

Finally, Reuters added CAMERA as one of the sources of information for the graphic.
 
The corrected English image has replaced the original, misleading graphic in Reuters’ images archive. The original erroneous Spanish and French versions have been apparently been removed. The updated, corrected graphic does not yet appear in those languages.
 
For additional Reuters corrections prompted by CAMERA, please see here.
 
This post was updated at 5:48 am EST to reflect the fact that Reuters replaced the erroneous English graphic from its archive and removed the skewed French and Spanish versions.

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