Jerusalem Tel Aviv Post Won’t Correct Op-Ed Misidentifying Israel’s Capital
The Jerusalem Post, the former flagship English language Israeli newspaper, located in Jerusalem since before Israel’s founding, has refused to correct an Op-Ed which misidentifies Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital.
The Post‘s decision not to correct the reference to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital is especially noteworthy given the fact that leading international media outlets such as The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post have commendably corrected the identical error in both Op-Eds and news articles in recent years.
Thus, in a Jan. 15, 2015 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, used the common journalistic practice of referring to a nation’s capital by naming its capital as shorthand for its government, erring:
In Washington, Ottawa, Paris and London, as well as in Tel Aviv, the response [to the Palestinians’ move to join the International Criminal Court] has ranged from discouraging to condemnatory.
Los Angeles Times editors immediately agreed that a correction was in order, and commendably ran the following on Jan. 22:
Likewise, in March 2014, The Washington Post prominently corrected a news article which, using the same shorthand, misidentified Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital:
Monitor Global Outlook, a research and intelligence service of The Christian Science Monitor, also corrected the very same shorthand error — citing Tel Aviv instead of Jerusalem, thereby incorrectly denoting Israel’s capital — in 2014.
Here in Jerusalem, where neither a global outlook, nor research, nor intelligence, is needed to determine that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Nevertheless, a The Jerusalem Post editor has declined to correct the Aug. 26 Op-Ed by Ramy Aziz, which states:
Other than Saudi Arabia and Egypt, there is no one more aware of the coming danger and more capable of meeting the challenge than Tel Aviv.
See also: “Who Knows How to Correct: Al Jazeera or The Jerusalem Post?”
Sept. 3 Update: Print Edition Runs Correction
The Jerusalem Post ran the following correction on page 14 of the print edition yesterday:
Editors have yet to correct the online edition, which enjoys a larger readership than its print counterpart.
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