“Jeopardy!” has apologized for a controversial question about the birthplace of Jesus — in which it deemed “Palestine” wrong and “Israel” correct — claiming it was aired in error.
Contestants on Friday’s episode were prompted to name the location of the Church of Nativity, the Bethlehem basilica revered as Jesus’ place of birth, NBC News reported.
Returning champion Katie Needle was the first to buzz on the $200 question, answering, “What is Palestine?”
But host Alex Trebek told the Brooklyn woman that she was incorrect, awarding the winning answer to another contestant, Jack McGuire, who responded with “What is Israel?”
The result set off a fierce debate on social media, where some viewers called on the game show to issue a correction.
“@Jeopardy you have lost a lifetime viewer,” Twitter user Bassem Nassir wrote. “Completely unacceptable that you deny that the Church of the Nativity is in Bethlehem, Palestine and insist that it is in Israel.”
The game show on Monday put out a statement claiming it had tried to scrap that part of the episode altogether after realizing it was “problematic” and replaced it with a prompt for “Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
But the original question still wound up airing due to “human error in post-production,” the show claimed.
“In the process of taping this clue, ‘BUILT IN THE 300s A.D., THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY’ we became aware that the clue was flawed as written and that determining an acceptable response would be problematic,” the show said in a statement. “In accordance with our rules and in the interest of fairness, we voided the clue and threw it out.”
“Unfortunately, through human error in post-production, the uncorrected version of the game was broadcast. We regret the error and we will make every effort to ensure this never happens again,” it continued.