BY TESFANEWS
A COMPLAINT filed by an Eritrean against one misleading story on Eritrea by a certain BBC reporter have reached into a resolution today.
The complainant, Yafet S., contested that the story in question consists a number of inaccuracies and he considered somehow derogatory towards Eritrea, including the statement that says “A 2011 UN report estimated that about 70% of Eritreans cannot meet their food needs on their own.”
After a lengthy process, though, the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit today acknowledged that the story, in fact, contains a number inaccurate information that are entirely misleading.
The Editorial Unit, therefore, ordered the article to be amended accordingly.
Finding by the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit
Complaint
A reader of this country profile [Eritrea] complained of a number of inaccuracies he considered derogatory towards Eritrea, including the statement that “A 2011 UN report estimated that about 70% of Eritreans cannot meet their food needs on their own”
Outcome
In response to the complaint, BBC News had already acknowledged that no such UN report was published in 2011 and that there was not enough evidence to support the claim that more than two-thirds of Eritreans could not meet their own food needs. Noting that the article had been amended accordingly and that the other statements contested by the complainant appeared to be accurate, the ECU considered the issue of complaint to have been resolved.
The BBC Editorial Complaints Unit previously gave a similar verdict against using the word “tiny“, when it is not, to describe Eritrea’s size in a derogatory way. Ever since then, the BBC have refrained from using the word for such purposes in all its Eritrea related reports.
