In March we noted that a BBC News website report by David Gritten told readers:
On Monday, authorities in Israel reported the first deadly [Iranian regime] strike there in just over a week.
A worker from China was killed and another was seriously injured by shrapnel from a missile with a cluster bomb warhead at a construction site in Yehud, local media reported. [Emphasis added.]
CAMERA UK submitted a complaint to the BBC on March 10, requesting a correction to the inaccurate claim that the Israeli victims of that attack – both residents of Petah Tikva – were “from China” and providing relevant links to local reporting on the story.
The BBC responded on March 18 that it would take the BBC more time to address our complaint and on April 8 a second communication maintained that the timeframe for doing so had expired.
On April 24 we received a response from the BBC which stated:
You wrote to us in relation to the above report to say: “The worker killed was not ‘from China’. Rustam Golumov and the second man who later succumbed to injuries from the same attack were both Israeli citizens from the town of Petah Tikva.”
We have been trying to confirm details of the two men. We have found out that they both originally came from Azerbaijan. We know for sure that one was a dual national. However, the we [sic] have not been able to confirm the citizenship status of the second man.
We have therefore amended the text to say:
Two workers were killed by shrapnel from a missile with a cluster bomb warhead at a construction site in Yehud, Israeli officials say.
We have also added this note to the end of the report:
Update 16 April: An earlier version of this story cited local media as reporting that a worker from China had been killed and another had been seriously injured in Israel by a missile. It has since been confirmed that the second worker subsequently died and that both had originally come from Azerbaijan.
In the original text, we had cited local media reports which claimed the men had come from China but said nothing about the citizenship status of either of them. In the note, we mention that we now know that both had originally come from Azerbaijan but again – given incomplete information – we have not mentioned their citizenship status. [Emphases added.]
CAMERA UK has therefore submitted a Stage 1b complaint, pointing out that the BBC’s new claim that “both had originally come from Azerbaijan” is also inaccurate.
Rustam Gulomov moved to Israel from Uzbekistan in 2011. The Embassy of Uzbekistan in Israel confirmed that he renounced his Uzbek citizenship in 2017 and obtained Israeli citizenship.
Amid Mortozov moved to Israel from Azerbaijan in 2007. He was also an Israeli citizen.
CAMERA UK once again informed the BBC that both men were Israeli citizens who lived in Petah Tikvah and worked in construction. We pointed out that the relevant information is available in the public domain and should not have been difficult for the BBC to find and that alternatively, the BBC could have enquired via the Israeli embassy in London.
We requested that the BBC amend the footnote to clarify that both victims were Israeli in order to meet its supposed standards of accuracy and out of respect for the deceased.
This article originally appeared at CAMERA UK.