Notorious anti-Israel polemicist Robert Fisk has a rich history of reporting Israeli military actions as atrocities and war crimes, so it’s worth taking a closer look at what he has to say about reporting of “fake atrocities” in his latest opinion piece in The Independent, where he asks the question:
Referencing “fake atrocities,” he writes:
In 1982, for example, Israeli journalists claimed they had found evidence that Palestinian guerrillas in southern Lebanon had established a clinic in which civilians were killed so that their blood could be drained – in order to supply blood transfusions for wounded Palestinian guerrillas.
The story collapsed with days. But it still pops up from time to time among the myths of the 1975-90 Lebanon war, muddying the awful truths of real atrocities like the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre of up to 1,700 Palestinian civilians by Israel’s Lebanese allies. Each false atrocity bleeds into the body of evidence of other, real crimes, contaminating the truth for decades to come.
A story about an alleged atrocity published by journalists that was debunked within days yet continues to appear as fact? Perhaps the best example of such a serious breach of journalistic ethics in recent memory was written by… Robert Fisk who clearly cannot see the irony of his latest op-ed.
Back in October 2006, Fisk was given the front page of the UK’s Independent to spread the libel that Israel had used uranium-based weapons in southern Lebanon. The charge was swiftly debunked yet Fisk never retracted this libel, which continues to reappear online courtesy of anti-Israel activists.
This is the same Robert Fisk who happily promoted the falsehood of the Jenin “Massacre” in 2002. And let’s not forget that The Independent was forced to pay damages to the Saudi interior minister in August 2011 after a story by Fisk was found to be false.
Fisk ends his op-ed by saying: “Thus we journos have to investigate each bestiality which comes our way, usually in the Middle East, with semantic scalpels.”
HonestReporting Managing Editor Simon Plosker responds:
Robert Fisk is the last person who should be preaching on the subject of ethical and professional reporting on alleged atrocities. The real atrocity is The Independent’s continuing publication of a polemicist with a penchant for muddying the truth. Fisk’s hypocrisy is truly breathtaking.
