Abdulaziz Al-Khalifa, Baladi News
"BBC" channel made the second mistake when talking about the Syrian situation, but this time the mistake came in a written article published on the channel's website on 13th of May, where it talked about an alleged massacre committed by the revolutionary factions in Al-Zarah village claiming that it's located on Barada river near the main road connecting Hama and Homs.
The channel claimed that armed men of Al-Nusra front, affiliated to IS, killed 19 civilians from the village when they seized control over it last Thursday, after taking into consideration the statement of the director of the Syrian observatory for Human Rights "Rami Abdul Rahman" which was reported by the regime's news agency "SANA".
This is a grave mistake committed by the channel; transferring the damascene Barada river to Hama instead of the Orontes River confirms the weakness of the information about Syria's geography. Consequently, casting doubt on the channel's news concerning the situation in Syria in general, especially that who makes mistakes in geography, will mistake in everything else considering that such information are available on the internet and easy to find.
BBC channel had previously used one of the footages published by activists showing the aerial bombardment by regime forces on the liberated neighborhoods of Aleppo in a report saying that the opposition is bombarding the civilian neighborhoods in the regime-held western Aleppo. What is considered a literal quoting of the regime's wording without verifying the accuracy of the information.
Despite the channel's apology on its Twitter account concerning all the false news it has published at the end of April, especially the bombing footages, it forgot to omit the biggest mistake it made which is correcting the name of the real criminal behind the bombing which is the Syrian regime. The thing that journalists considered as public complicity with the regime. Moreover, apologizing for the error must be made in the same platform and not on Twitter. It should have been made it through its televised news bulletins.
It's noteworthy that the Syrian journalist "Deema Eiz Al-Deen" resigned from the channel following the mistake about Syria and said: "the criteria founded for this institution are no longer being applied".