Following CiF Watch post, Guardian corrects story on protest at Bab al-Shams

H/T CAMERA

On Jan. 13, we criticized a story by Harriet Sherwood (‘Israel evicts E1 Palestinian peace camp activists) about Palestinian protesters who set up a tent city named Bab al-Shams – in the area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim known as E-1 – and who were removed by Israeli police.  

We noted that Sherwood’s report included the false information that “all” of the Palestinians were arrested when, in fact, nobody was arrested.

Here are the two relevant passages in Sherwood’s report:

According to activists, a large military force surrounded the encampment at around 3am. All protesters were arrested and six were injured, said Abir Kopty.”

Palestinian legislator Mustafa Barghouti, who was among those arrested, said the eviction was “proof that the Israeli government operates an apartheid system.

The strap line for the story also reported that protesters were “arrested”.

We noted that Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that there were no arrests made — a statement (which he later confirmed to CAMERA) accurately reported by several Arab media outlets. According to Rosenfeld, a few activists were detained briefly, and then released.

We asked our blog’s followers to contact the Guardian’s readers’ editor to request a correction and, sure enough, less than 24 hours after our post, the story was revised, and the language about “arrests” removed (including in the strap line).

Sherwood’s report now includes this footnote:

This article was amended on 14 January 2013. Activists were detained but not formally arrested. This has been corrected.

As always, many thanks to our loyal readers for working with us in our ongoing efforts to keep the Guardian accountable to basic standards of accuracy.

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