Dateline dispute

A memory from the archives.

The late Ibrahim Noori was a master of Middle East politics but even he could not always avoid trouble, particularly when a story was from the other side of the Arab-Israeli divide.

On one occasion in 1984, when Ibrahim was the Reuter correspondent in Amman, he was summoned to the Jordanian Ministry of Information for a formal protest. The problem was a Reuters story from Israel with the dateline Allenby Bridge, Israel-Jordan border.

The Ministry informed Ibrahim that the dateline was “a serious error of fact, history and geography and injured the dignity of Jordan”.

The outcome was summarised drily by François Duriaud, Reuters Middle East editor, in a report to Reuters management: “Correction was demanded and Reuters issued a note to subscribers,” he wrote. ■