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Politicizing Israeli Wildfires

The AFP and The Guardian, which republished the wire service’s story on the Israeli wildfires, can barely contain their excitement. AFP’s headline: And The Guardian’s: Yet while AFP’s headline emphasizes Jewish…

Simon Plosker
November 27, 2016
12:00 am

Reading time: < 1 minutes

The AFP and The Guardian, which republished the wire service’s story on the Israeli wildfires, can barely contain their excitement.

AFP’s headline:

And The Guardian’s:

Yet while AFP’s headline emphasizes Jewish settlers and The Guardian’s focus is the “occupied West Bank,” a significant part of the AFP story also covers major blazes in Haifa and the village of Nataf, neither of which are located in the West Bank. AFP, however, assumes that readers are fully versed on the geography of Israel, doing nothing to dispel the impression that all of the affected locations are in the “occupied West Bank.”

Are The Guardian and AFP completely incapable of avoiding linking anything and everything to the settlement issue, even devastating wildfires?

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Tags: AFP, Agence France Presse, distorted facts, fires, headline bias, imbalanced reporting, settlements, The Guardian, West Bank, wildfires

Simon Plosker

With over two decades of experience in various non-governmental organizations in the UK and Israel, Simon Plosker returned to HonestReporting in October 2022 as Editorial Director having previously been part of the organization’s management team from 2005 to 2020. Prior to his first spell at HonestReporting, Simon worked in Israel for NGO Monitor, BICOM, and served for a short period in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. He was Managing Editor of the Geneva-based NGO United Nations Watch for two years before moving back to the frontline defending Israel from media bias. Simon has a BSoc.Sc in International Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham and an MSc in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics. He immigrated to Israel in 2001 from London.

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