UPDATES
- The LA Times headline (see below) has now been updated and reads: “6 Palestinians dead as violence grips Gaza, Jerusalem.”
- It’s still highly problematic but The Independent has changed its headline to “Israel kills pregnant mother and her baby in retaliatory attacks.”
- Following a complaint from HonestReporting, the Daily Mail has amended the title of its video, which now reads: “Amateur footage shows Palestinian woman shot in Afula,” a definite improvement over the word “executed” although still lacking in context.
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As a wave of Palestinian terror continues to escalate, some media have joined in the assault on Israelis. Here we expose just some of the most recent bias.
HEADLINE FAILS
Perhaps the crudest headline comes from The Independent:
Obviously the death of a pregnant mother and her baby in an Israeli air strike is tragic. But that is exactly the point. Israel certainly never intentionally set out to target them and the description of the air strike as a “revenge attack” adds a particular malevolence to Israeli actions, which took place in response to a rocket attack from Gaza.
The bottom line is that The Independent’s headline portrays Israel as a malicious baby killer.
A previous Independent headline from the day before managed to insert a “cycle of violence”:
The current situation is not a “cycle of violence,” which implies a moral equivalence and equal responsibility to the two sides. It is Palestinians who are committing acts of terror and initiating confrontations with Israeli forces while Palestinian deaths have occurred as a result of Israeli responses.
Meanwhile, is the LA Times trying to outdo the BBC with this headline?
Two of the aforementioned teens in the headline were killed while carrying out stabbing attacks, which were examples of Palestinian and not “Israeli violence.” The other two were killed in violent demonstrations initiated by Palestinians.
Once again, it is Palestinians who are portrayed as victims despite Israelis being on the receiving end of a wave of Palestinian terror.
VIDEO NASTY
The Daily Mail‘s website embedded a video of the aftermath of a Palestinian stabbing attack in the Afula bus station. After failing to drop her knife, the female Palestinian attacker was shot by Israeli forces at the scene.
But check out the video’s title:
Executed?!
Having failed to give any context concerning the contents of the video, the title is inflammatory and implies that a Palestinian woman might as well have been deliberately selected for a firing squad for no given reason.
It’s only further down in the article itself that readers are informed of the Afula stabbing separate from the video footage itself.
[sc:graybox ]The above examples are only a selection of some of the bias that is infecting the coverage of the wave of terror. If you see something that catches your eye in your local media, let us know through our Red Alert contact form.
Featured image: CC BY-NC Jeremy Piehler via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
