The recent tragic deaths of ten Israeli teens swept away in a flash flood in the southern Dead Sea region was covered by The Guardian, which republished an Associated Press wire story.
While it is normal for minor edits to be made to AP copy or any other stories from wire services, The Guardian’s changes left us asking how such a fundamental error could be made.
For The Guardian’s version of the AP report stated:
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 25 students in a pre-army course were “caught off guard” near Arava in southern Israel and some were “washed away” by heavy rains. He said 15 hikers were rescued and one was still missing. Eight of those killed were men and one was a woman; they were all 18.
In fact, as correctly reported by the AP and every other media outlet we saw, eight of those killed were women and one was a man. (This was written before the tenth fatality, another female, had been located).
We contacted Guardian editors, also pointing out that the 25 students on the trip were 17 and 18 years old. In response, The Guardian published the following correction underneath the story:
