With the world watching Syria, Egypt, and Iran so closely in 2013, Israel was relatively less of a lightning rod for the international media.
Still, Israeli-Palestinian negotiators were nudged back to the peace table, and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out against the shortcomings of Iranian nuclear diplomacy. US-Israel relations were strained by differences on both issues. Everything else was either just a detail, or 
simply paled in comparison to those bigger issues.
We thank our readers for sharing their thoughts on the year that was. Here are the 2013 Dishonest Reporting runners-up.
We’ll announce who our readers selected for the ignoble grand winner later this week, so stay tuned.
And now, without further ado . . .
The 2013 Dishonest Reporting Awards
Dumbest Tweet: Borzou Daragahi- Most Skewed Moral Compass: Amira Hass
- Most Brainless Headline (USA): CNN
- Most Brainless Headline (UK): The Guardian
- Poison Pen: German Cartoonists
- Most Bullheaded Broadcasting Corp.: BBC
- Favorite Identity Crisis: Newseum
- Most Creative Self-Marketing: Fadi Arouri
- Most Bitter Medicine: The Lancet
Dumbest Tweet: Borzou Daragahi
Only fringe conspiracy theorists would take this Financial Times reporter’s tweet seriously. In February, Bulgarian investigators concluded that Hezbollah was responsible for a 2012 suicide bombing which killed five Israelis, their Bulgarian driver, and injured dozens more in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas. The FT’s Borzou Daragahi suggested on Twitter that Israel paid Bulgaria to blame Hezbollah.
Finding himself in hot water, Daragahi tweeted an apology a few hours later. But one question lingers: What does it say about the state of the media when a journalist tweets such mindless stupidity?
Most Skewed Moral Compass: Amira Hass
Haaretz columnist Amira Hass disgusted HonestReporting readers when she defended Palestinian rock throwing. She later followed up with more moral ambiguity justifying a mega terror tunnel the IDF discovered under the Israel-Gaza border.
Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule . . . Throwing stones is an action as well as a metaphor of resistance.
Discussing the furor, Hass insisted to 972 Mag:
Stone throwing is a message, and the Israelis don’t listen to it.
Hospitalized Israeli children like Avigail Ben Zion and Adele Biton are too young to understand Hass’s so-called “metaphors of resistance,” but left-wing activist Danny Seidemann sure got the message.
Most Brainless Headline (USA): CNN
Wouldn’t the CNN brass be more than irked if rockets were fired at them?
Most Brainless Headline (UK): The Guardian
This commentary in The Guardian‘s print edition was just as snooty and arrogant as the headline.
The author, Giles Fraser, wrote:
But the flip side of all this prodigy-like technological mastery is a lack of empathy, an inability to meet the gaze or to enter into the emotional reality of its neighbours. In this Rain Man caricature, Israel lives in an existential bubble, cut off (by a wall, both mental and literal) from its surroundings.
To which one reader, Smellthecoffee2, aptly commented:
Awards for German cartoonists, the BBC, a very unethical Palestinian photojournalist, and more.
