Red faces at the BBC after reporter tweets ‘heartbreaking photo of child hurt by Israeli rocket’ which is actually a girl in Syria.
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A BBC war reporter made a shocking blunder by tweeting a photograph of an injured child from Syria but indicating she was from Gaza. Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison added ‘Heartbreaking’ to the front of a message he retweeted from a Palestinian ‘journalist and social activist’ named Hazem Balousha. Balousha had posted a picture of a young girl lying on a hospital bed with bloodied clothes, along with the words ‘Pain in #Gaza.’
Donnison’s tweet went out to his 7,971 followers on the social networking site and he was soon hit with a barrage of outraged responses highlighting the mistake. The website bbcwatch.org highlighted the error and wrote: ‘Up to now, it may have been possible to put down Jon Donnison’s frequently problematic reporting to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the region.
‘However, his decision to promote deliberate misinformation – either knowingly or as a result of a complete failure to check facts – indicates that he is not merely naive. ‘Donnison has rendered himself no longer fit for the purpose of accurate and impartial reporting from the Middle East in accordance with the BBC’s legal obligations.’
