Mick Hartley

The Beeb again. Responding to a complaint that they’d used a lowercase ‘h’ for Holocaust, they replied, “There have been other holocausts.” From Jewish News:

In its website report on Jewish survivors of Nazi atrocities meeting the King and Queen, the BBC wrote that: “Mala Tribich became the first holocaust survivor to address the cabinet,” adding that she had asked “How, 81 years after the holocaust, can these people once again be targeted in this way?”

A reader who registered a complaint about the lowercase ‘h’ was told in an email, apparently written by an experienced BBC broadcast journalist who we have agreed not to name: “Historically there have been other examples of holocausts elsewhere.”

Contacted by Jewish News the corporation backtracked, added a footnote to the online article and said its initial email to a reader had been “sent in error”.

A BBC spokesperson said: “This response was sent in error. All references to the Holocaust in this article should have been capitalised and we have now updated it accordingly and added a note of correction. We will be writing again to the original correspondent.”…

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism accused the BBC of “peddling softcore Holocaust denial” by refusing to acknowledge the uniqueness of the Shoah.”…

The incident comes days after the BBC was forced to issue an apology after some of its coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January failed to mention Jews, saying only that “six million people” had been murdered by the Nazi regime.