The Economist calls EoZ readers a "pro-settler group" in condescending response

CAMERA followed up on The Economist's article that stated, falsely, that "so far this year, Israel's army has evicted almost 400 Palestinians from the West Bank and dismantled over 200 homes, the fastest rate for two years, according to the UN." As I noted at the time, this - together with the tweet The Economist made of that sentence - was wrong, and should be corrected. Ialso noted that The Economist made apparently no effort to ask any Israeli officials their side of the story - the article was ridiculously biased.

The Economist sent emails to EoZ readers complaining about it by defending the article, but they did change the online version (without admitting a correction) because they seemed to realize that it could be "misinterpreted" to mean precisely what it says.

They never corrected the tweet, nor did they correct their online edition. Moreover, as I proved, the source for the statistics was not the UN but a large group of anti-Israel NGOs who were published on the UN website.

Now, when people continued to demand a full correction, The Economist's editors answer derisively:

I am sorry to disappoint you. We will be making no "correction" in our printed edition because there was nothing in our article that was factually wrong which we needed to correct. We have made a clarification online to remove the slightest ambiguity in the sentence to which you refer concerning evictions.

As we explained (below) in our comprehensive rebuttal of the various charges and unwarranted slurs in the letters we received that were orchestrated by a pro-settler group discomfited by our meticulously researched article, a reader would misunderstand that sentence only if it were taken out of context or wilfully misinterpreted.

Thus there will be no "correction" in our printed edition.

This correspondence is now closed.

With best wishes

John Micklethwait
Editor-in-Chief
The Economist

and

Xan Smiley
Middle East & Africa editor
The Economist

So my readers are now a "pro-settler group!" We really need a name. "Elderists"?  "The Elderati?" "Zekenim"? "Ziyonists"?

The British Editors' Code of Practice requires that media are "not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information," and if they do it "must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published."

As CAMERA notes:

What emerges from this response is not only the contempt the editors hold for their readers, but their clear violation of the British Editors' Code of Practice. Far from fulfilling their duty "to maintain highest professional standards," The Economist's editors have stooped to the lowest standards.