Reuters, relying on unnamed ‘witnesses’, reported that a 12-year-old Palestinian was stabbed to death by Israeli settlers yesterday. The New York Times echoed Reuters’ report.
But the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz reported, based on Palestinian officials’ admission to Israeli police, that the boy was most likely stabbed by other Palestinians in a clan feud.
This appears to be another case of an unreliable Palestinian account unquestionably passed on by the media. The time has come for news outlets to institute a fact-checking period before promulgating dubious claims from Palestinian witnesses.
Comments to Reuters: [email protected]
UPDATE: Reuters has another dispatch on the incident, recognizing that Palestinian police now suspect a Palestinian perpetrator. The need for a waiting period before reporting it in the first place very much remains.
EyeOnThePost 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 — and never corrected by the Post.
