BBC presenter Andrew Marr breached editorial guidelines when he remarked during his flagship Sunday morning programme that Israel had killed “lots of Palestinian kids”, the Corporation has ruled.
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 veteran 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.”
But the Mail on Sunday reported antisemitism campaigner Jonathan Sacerdoti had complained about Marr making reference to Israel following a discussion on the “unrelated“ topic of Syria.
“He stated there’s a lot of Palestinian kids being killed further south by Israeli forces,” Mr Sacerdoti's complaint said.
“This is completely incorrect and is made up. This was irrelevant to the conversation on Syria… and also actually completely false.”
The BBC's head of executive coplaints, Fraser Steel, said he would be upholding part of the complaint.
“The BBC’s guidelines require that output is ‘well sourced’ and ‘based on sound evidence’,” he said in his response to Mr Sacerdoti.
“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.”
