The duty of reporters is to alert readers to the inadequacies of the information available, to emphasize that Israeli army reports, which
are often false and self-serving, are unverified, and avoid reporting
such claims as uncontested fact. Reporting an incident in Gaza on January 13th, several media organisations once again failed to
maintain clarity about the quality of their information source. Ali
Abunimah reports. Read more about Mystery surrounds killing of two Palestinians in Occupied Gaza
UK television regulators have cleared John Pilger of breaking broadcasting rules in his documentary, “Palestine is still the issue,” which attracted more than 100 complaints from viewers. The regulator ruled that the TV network, Carlton, had provided “persuasive evidence of the care and thoroughness with which it was researched.” Louise Jury reports in The Independent.Read more about UK TV documentary cleared of charges of anti-Israel bias
Why do false assertions about the circumstances of Israel’s November killing of UN official Iain Hook in Jenin continue to make it into NPR news bulletins even after they have been fully exposed? Hugh Sansom, an avid NPR listener, shared this letter with EI. Read more about NPR continues to misreport Israel's killing of UN official Iain Hook
“It is increasingly clear that Arabs and Muslims are the new enemy in Washington, a national capital that many find reminiscent of the dark days of the McCarthy Era.” A presentation delivered by EI’s Laurie King-Irani at the seventh annual “Common Terms: The Dialogue of Civilizations” conference sponsored by the Imam Musa Sadr Foundation, 13 December 2002, in Beirut, Lebanon. Read more about Fundamentalisms, media, and the new McCarthyism: how demagogues are hijacking Washington, DC
Journalists are being attacked for telling the truth about the situation in the Middle East, especially American journalists, writes Robert Fisk in The Independent. What’s wrong and how can it be fixed? Read more about Journalists are under fire for telling the truth
Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher revealed either simple ignorance of a well-established school of thought or journalistic laziness when he attached the label of ‘Holocaust revisionist’ to author Norman Finkelstein. Amazingly, it took a while for Finkelstein to get a retraction. Mark Hand reports. Read more about Washington Post retracts "Holocaust revisionism" claim against Norman Finkelstein
“Every six months or so a report comes out detailing the woeful state of geographical knowledge held by many Americans. Usually people chuckle and wonder how it is that so many Americans think California is on the East Coast. After all, every rightly educated American knows it’s on the Left Coast.” Mike Brown writes about what happens when the New York Times sits in on a Middle East geography test. Read more about The New York Times gets an 'F' for geography
NPR loudly reported highly dubious, anonymous claims that Palestinian “extremists” linked to Al-Qaida had obtained a deadly nerve agent from Iraq. When Pentagon sources poured cold water on the charges, which came from a Washington Post journalist who had previously concealed news at the government’s request, NPR fell silent. EI’s Ali Abunimah takes NPR to task. Read more about NPR allows dubious, sensational claims to stand
On Wednesday 11th December 2002, the social arm of Lebanese resistance group Hizbullah was one of three organisations to be added to Canada’s official list of “terrorist entities”. Canadian newspapers and politicians cited, as the ultimate deciding factor for Canada’s policy change towards Hizbullah, a statement attributed to its leader Hassan Nasrallah last month in which he allegedly urged Palestinians to undertake suicide bombings outside of Israel/Palestine, in locations around the world. But it has now emerged that the source of the remarks is suspect, meaning that an organisation widely recognised for its humanitarian contributions in desperate areas of the Middle East has been cut off from a considerable number of donors on the basis of a false account. EI’s Nigel Parry reports. Read more about False Washington Times report convinces Canada to ban Hizbullah
The Reuters article “Double standards” that appeared in the Oct 10th edition of the Economist was been widely circulated and lauded by pro-Israeli media monitoring groups as “seminal” (Honest Reporting, Oct 17) and “highly informative and balanced” (CAMERA alert, Oct 16). This dubious praise was only garnered because the article avoided a rather important fact… Read more about Economist: Main reason for UN inaction against Israel glossed over
