The British Press Council, a voluntary organization of representatives of publishers and newspapermen’s unions, condemned today an editor’s refusal to correct a report that a fire in the Brixton Synagogue in London was a sign of a new flare-up of race hatred. The request for a retraction and correction had been made by Rabbi A. Steinberg, spiritual leader of Brixton Synagogue.
The Press Council’s action followed a formal complaint by the Board of Deputies of British Jews against the editor of the “South London Advertiser,” a suburban weekly The Council deplored the “dangerously exaggerated tone of the article” and condemned the editor for refusing to print the letter by Rabbi Steinberg asking him to correct these “serious misstatements.”
The offending article had featured the fire as evidence of a new anti-Semitic campaign in the neighborhood and had declared that Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the area were praying that the fire was not a “signal for race war.” It further stated that the synagogue had been desecrated a few weeks earlier when a pig’s head had been nailed to the door on a Sabbath. Rabbi Steinberg denied that there was any truth in the report of the pig’s head incident or that Jews were praying that the fire was not a signal for the outbreak of racial violence.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
