After contact from CAMERA, Smithsonian Magazine commendably changed a Nov. 10, 2025 report “A 5,000 Year Old Canaanite Wine Press Has Been Discovered in Israel.” The report initially claimed that the report asserts that a recent archaeological discovery in Israel was “near the ancient Palestinian city of Megiddo” and included a wine press that was “carved into bedrock by Canaanites, the pagan peoples who inhabited Palestine through the Early Bronze Age.” Later, it added: “Megiddo is situated in the ancient region of Canaan, which enveloped Palestine, modern Israel and parts of Syria.”
But as CAMERA told Smithsonian staff, Megiddo is not, in fact, an “ancient Palestinian city.” Indeed, 5,000 years ago that term didn’t exist. And the description itself is at odds with that provided by the archaeologists who are quoted in the article. As Amir Golani told the Times of Israel: “Megiddo is one of the largest and most important archaeological sites in Israel.”
Several outlets have noted that “Palestine” is not the historically accurate term to describe the region during the time period in question. In a 2008 correction, for example, the New York Times noted that the region was “not Palestine, which derives from the word Palestina, the name that Roman conquerors gave to the region more than 100 years after Jesus’s death.”
Another April 27 2019 correction stated: “Because of an editing error, an article last Saturday referred incorrectly to Jesus’s background. While he lived in an area that later came to be known as Palestine, Jesus was a Jew who was born in Bethlehem.” This, of course, was several millennia after the time period detailed in this Smithsonian dispatch.
Following contact from CAMERA, Smithsonian amended the report to remove references to “Palestine,” and added an editor’s note on November 18 observing that: “This story has been updated to more accurately describe the region and the location of the wine press. It is in northern Israel in the ancient region of Canaan.”