Jerusalem Massacre: Watchdog Blasts Media’s Shameful Coverage

Media watchdog HonestReporting chronicled the media’s shamefully misleading coverage of a cold-blooded massacre targeting Jewish Israelis on the Sabbath.

By United with Israel Staff

The media’s obsession with Israel increasingly leads to distorted coverage that obscures the truth to demonize the Jewish state.

Exposing this agenda, and revealing the truth, remains the mission of HonestReporting, a watchdog group that consistently pokes holes in the media’s biased coverage of Israel.

Most recently, HonestReporting identified the disturbing bias in the media’s coverage of a Sabbath evening massacre in Jerusalem last week during which a Palestinian murderer gunned down seven Israeli citizens in cold blood. On the same evening, another Palestinian attacker shot two other Israelis, both of whom survived.

“International media organizations made a number of misleading claims and assertions that negatively impacted their reports,” explained HonestReporting at the beginning of the week. “These claims concerned the details of the attacks, the status of the neighborhood of Neve Yaakov, the false equivalence between these attacks and Israeli counter-terror operations, as well as misleading use of terminology. ”

Specifically, HonestReporting pointed out that The Times of London‘s coverage “distorted the facts…impl[ying] an extrajudicial killing of [an] unarmed assailant by Israeli security forces when, in fact, his death was a justifiable outcome of a gunfight initiated by the terrorist.”

Similarly, The Times of London, ABC News and The Guardian misrepresented the location of the attack, Neve Yaakov, as a “settlement” outside Jerusalem or in “East Jerusalem.” Reuters claimed Neve Yaakov “lies on occupied land.”

In reality, Neve Yaakov is a neighborhood within the Jerusalem municipality and “does not have the legal status of a ‘settlement,'” being instead a “fully integrated municipal neighborhood,” explained HonestReporting.

Why does the media misrepresent Neve Yaakov as a “settlement” on “occupied land”?

Because that narrative allows Israel’s detractors to justify the murder of innocent civilians.

Outlets such as The New York Times and MSNBC also “cynically equat[ed] the IDF counter-terror operation in Jenin and the terrorist attacks in Jerusalem…helping to contribute to the atmosphere of incitement and violent rhetoric that culminated in the Jerusalem attacks over the weekend.”

Indeed, a number of media outlets refused to identify the majority of casualties in the Jenin raid as armed fighters.

Finally, HonestReporting also chronicled the media’s old trick of misleading “terminology and rhetorical devices,” which included this CBS News headline: “At least 7 killed in shooting near synagogue in Jerusalem; gunman slain.”

Meanwhile, France 24 despicably called to the massacre a “counter-protest” and the The Independent shamefully used scare quotes in its headline when it referred to a “terror attack.”

Why can’t the media be counted on to report accurately about a heinous crime targeting innocent individuals when the victims are Jewish Israelis?