Marr complaint upheld
VETERAN JOURNALIST Andrew Marr breached editorial guidelines when he remarked during his flagship BBC Sunday morning programme that Israel had killed “lots of Palestinian kids”, the Corporation has ruled.
Mr Marr made the comment at the end of a discussion about a Syrian chemical weapons attack on civilians during the April 8 edition of The Andrew Marr Show.
The presenter said: “And the Middle East is aflame again. I mean there’s lots of Palestinian kids being killed further south as well by Israeli forces.”
Antisemitism campaigner Jonathan Sacerdoti complained about the reference to Israel being made following the “unrelated” discussion on Syria.
Mr Sacerdoti’s complaint said the comment was : “He stated there’s a lot of Palestinian kids being killed further south by Israeli forces.
“This is completely incorrect and is made up.
“This was irrelevant to the conversation on Syria… and also actually completely false.”
Fraser Steel, the BBC’s head of complaints, said in his response to Mr Sacerdoti: “The BBC’s guidelines require that output is ‘well sourced’ and ‘based on sound evidence’.
“In the absence of any evidence to support the reference to ‘lots’ of children being killed at the time of transmission, it seems to us to have risked misleading audiences on a material point. “We therefore propose to uphold this part of your complaint.”