UK Media Watch prompts Guardian correction on number of Palestinian detainees

An Aug. 2nd Guardian article by Mairav Zonszein (Israel to detain Jewish terror suspects without trial) included an erroneous statistic on the number of Palestinians held by Israel under what’s known as administrative detention (detention by the state without trial for security reasons).
Here’s the passage in question:

wrong number

It appears as if this claim was based on this B’tselem page.  However, as you can see from the NGO’s graph, 5,442 represents the total number of security detainees in all categories. The number of administrative detainees (as of June 31) is actually 370.
graph from btselem

 

Indeed, earlier today, CAMERA prompted a correction to the same error at Reuters 

So, we contacted Guardian editors (and tweeted Zonszein) to alert them about the error.  And, within the last hour, we received a tweet back from the Guardian contributor notifying us that the passage had been revised.

tweet

 

The correct figure was added, and the following addendum now appears at the bottom of the article.

addendum guardian

We commend Guardian editors and Ms. Zonszein on the speedy correction.

Written By
More from Adam Levick
Carmel fire approaches Haifa: Fire shows no sign of dying down
On Friday evening Israeli news outlets were reporting that the Carmel fire...
Read More
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *