FEOR considered the story on the Rossiya 24 channel anti-Semitic

On August 23, 2012, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR) sent a letter to the head of VGTRK Oleg Dobrodeev with a request to comment on the appearance on the Russia 24 channel of a story about the baby Gabriel of Bialystok, where it was reported that Gabriel was “kidnapped from his home by a Jew and taken to Bialystok, where was brutally tortured." The FEOR considered this passage anti-Semitic and demanded a refutation.

“The Jewish community in Russia expresses bewilderment at how, in our time, in such a large and serious media outlet as Russia 24, it is possible to reproduce, without any intelligible commentary, medieval mythology, which more than once in the past has served as the cause of mass murders and pogroms of the Jewish population and has been refuted many times, including by church representatives themselves,” said FEOR press secretary Anastasia Kudrina.

On August 24, the VGTRK press service explained that when writing the news, the editors used the ITAR-TASS text and left the fragment that outraged FJR unchanged. But after a reader called, the news on the channel’s website was corrected.

“This fact is an unfortunate mistake, however, of a technical nature,” the press service reported and apologized for the oversight.

Representatives of ITAR-TASS stated that they cited in their news “the official version of events as presented by the Russian Orthodox Church,” but did not cite the source. The author of the news received a remark.

Sources

• The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia accused the state channel "Russia 24" of anti-Semitism for posting a story about St. Martyr Gabriel of Bialystok and asked the Russian Orthodox Church MP to explain himself // Portal-Credo.ru. 2012. August 24.
• VGTRK apologized for the anti-Semitic news on the website and explained: this is an unfortunate technical error // Newsru.com. 2012. August 24.
• VGTRK shifted responsibility for the anti-Semitic news to ITAR-TASS // Lenta.ru. 2012. August 27.