BBC News defended Plett in a statement by saying that her reporting had met the high standards of "fairness, accuracy and balance" expected of a BBC correspondent. Initially, a complaint of bias against Plett was rejected by the BBC's head of editorial complaints. However, almost a year later, on 25 November 2005, the programme complaints committee of the BBC governors partially upheld the complaints by ruling that Plett's comments "breached the requirements of due impartiality". Despite initially issuing a statement in support of Plett, the BBC Director of News, Helen Boaden, later apologised for what she described as "an editorial misjudgment". The governors praised Boaden's speedy response and reviewed the BBC's stance on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.