Thursday, July 21, 2005

Washington Post -- More Evidence

Hat tip to Honestreporting.com for this one -- in an alert about Palestinians being unreliable witnesses:

Media monitors EyeOnThePost [July 20 entry] caught a similar case this week, when the Washington Post reported that 'more than a dozen bystanders were killed [by IDF fire], according to [Palestinian] hospital officials'. That report was never substantiated, never repeated elsewhere ― and never corrected by the Post.

9 Comments:

At 12:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good find, Esther. It always upsets me to see such distorted reporting. Thankfully there are other sources of information that act as a check against these errors. This is just one more reason not to rely exclusively on a handful of sources. The Washington Post owes its readers a retraction or a correction. It will be interesting to see how this plays in the weekend ombudsman column (on Saturday, I think).

 
At 12:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think after the so-called Jenin Massacre, the most egregious example of the "unreliability" (let me call it what it really is -- they're damned liars) of Palestinian witnesses, was the case of Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year old Palestinian boy who was supposedly killed by IDF fire at the beginning of the "intifada." (Let me also call that what it really was -- Yasser Arafat's terror campaign against Israeli civilians). The Palestinians won a huge propaganda victory as pictures of the boy being shielded by his father went out around the world. For some reason, perhaps to try to defuse the situation, the IDF copped to the killing and issued an apology. The problem is there were too many holes in the eyewitness accounts of some of the Palestinians and so eventually a German TV station conducted a very thorough investigation. What they determined was not only was it highly unlikely the child was killed by IDF gunfire, due to the trajectory of the bullets and other factors, but it appears he may have been deliberately murdered in what was referred to as "a piece of Palestinian street theatre." I don't know what it's going to take to convince the mainstream media not to automatically take the word of Palestinian witnesses. After all, if the sight of that dead body (supposedly one of the hundreds of victims of the Jenin Massacre, when there were really only about two dozen) falling off a gurney and then getting up and running away wasn't enough to convince them, I don't think anything will be.

 
At 2:32 PM, Blogger birdwoman said...

don't you love the professional journos? From killing military recruitment by posting false stories, to egging on any political in-fighting, they've really blown their place in society as anything but tripe.

long live blogs!

(*)>

 
At 2:38 PM, Blogger Esther said...

I agree with you, Jonathan... I'm interested to see how it plays out over the weekend too.

rory, that so called massacre bugged the crap outta me too. They get away with so much and I'm tired of it. Can't even imagine how the Israelis deal. The fact that no one has snapped and massacred them for real is a miracle.

bw, i can't agree more on all counts!

 
At 3:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention of our group and thanks to Honest Reporting for picking up on our find and helping to disseminate information about it. Please note that it was our 7-20-05 "alert," rather than 7-21-05 that caught the Post's false report about the supposed 12 dead bystanders. One of the great injustices caused by this type of irresponsible reporting from the Post is that Post articles are picked up and reprinted all over the US and world. This particular Scott Wilson article was published in at least a half dozen other newspapers around the country.

Robert G. Samet
Chairman
EyeOnThePost, Inc.
http://www.EyeOnThePost.org

 
At 4:08 PM, Blogger Esther said...

I will correct that right now, Robert. You do great work. You are absolutely right -- since they are reprinted elsewhere, they really need to be more responsible about what they put out there.

 
At 4:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You should see how the Palestinian/Arab victims multiply in Arab and generally Islamic media.
They do not hate to provide any evidence of course.
One Muslim wouldn't lie to another would he?

 
At 9:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I saw that the other day as well. It really opens your eyes and remind you to be vigilant when following the media. It's just such a pity that some people take that as gospel

 
At 5:05 PM, Blogger Always On Watch said...

As a reader of the Washington Post, I'm glad to add the "Eye" site to my list of bookmarks.

Thanks, Esther!

 

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