Yet another incident of media bias against Israel shows why it is important to remain vigilant in order to catch these “mistakes,” fight them and have them corrected to reflect the truth.
Reuters on Monday issued a correction and refiled a photo caption about a Palestinian stabbing attack in Israel, following outreach from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a media watchdog group.
On March 31, the family home of late Palestinian terrorist Ihab Maswadeh—who carried out a stabbing attack in Hebron last December—was partially demolished by Israeli forces. The original photo caption published by Reuters on the home demolition claimed that Maswadeh was “shot dead by Israeli troops after he attempted to stab an Israeli soldier last December.”
CAMERA reached out to Reuters and noted, “First, Maswadeh not only ‘attempted’ to stab an Israeli. He actually succeeded, striking his victim several times in the upper body and inflicting fatal wounds. The victim, Genadi Kaufman, died of his wounds three weeks later.”
Additionally, Kaufman was not an “Israeli soldier,” but a gardener working near the Cave of the Patriarchs at the time.
Reuters eventually issued a correction and refiled its caption, stating, “REFILE – CLARIFYING REFERENCE TO THE STABBING ATTACK A relative of Palestinian Ihab Maswadeh (seen in the poster), who fatally stabbed an Israeli man last December, inspects the damage after the Israeli forces partially demolished Maswadeh’s house in the West Bank city of Hebron March 31, 2016.”
Israel has been encountering biased and unfair foreign press coverage of the events transpiring in the country and has many examples as evidence, but the foreign media still blindly insists their conduct is professional and their reports reflect the truth.
”I fail to see the media has something to answer in terms of systemic bias,” Reuters` Jerusalem Bureau chief and Foreign Press Association head Luke Baker stated at the Knesset during a session on media bias by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s Subcommittee on Legal Warfare in February.
However, numerous documented incidents of media bias and unprofessional journalism demonstrate that there is indeed a systemic bias on the part of the foreign press in Israel.
By: JNS.org and United with Israel