The BBC has the right to report on those matters it judges to be of interest to its audiences.  The decision to report on criticism of the Egyptian President was not therefore of itself proof of bias and a programme looking at emerging trends in politics and media in the Arabic speaking world was entitled to look at what events in one country might mean for others in the region, including their governments. 

In terms of specific concerns raised, the ECU did not agree most identified a breach of editorial standards, particularly in relation to the accuracy of a quotation from an article in the Washington Post, a claim that Egyptian state media had rebroadcast older reports about prisons in Egypt, and analysis of comments by the Egyptian President.

However, it accepted that a summary the programme gave of an article from the newspaper Maariv did not accurately convey the points made by the author. This did not meet the standards set out in the editorial guidelines and the ECU therefore upheld this aspect of the complaint.

The ECU noted the programme-makers had acknowledged the mistake and removed this section from the YouTube version of the output, but not from the BBC website.  The latter has since been edited to bring it into line with the YouTube version and both now feature text setting out what the Maariv article said.  However, as there had been no public acknowledgement of this issue, as would be expected in such cases, the ECU could not consider the matter to have been fully resolved. 

Partly Upheld