Palestinian techno music isn’t necessarily to everyone’s taste. Nonetheless, what goes on in Ramallah’s party scene isn’t of much interest to the IDF or Israeli security forces. Which was why we were surprised to see the following claim in a feature-length article in The Independent:
Since when were Israeli authorities responsible for allowing parties or implementing a midnight curfew on music in Ramallah?!
The city is wholly administered by the Palestinian Authority on both civil and security levels as agreed upon in the Oslo Accords.
Not every restriction on Palestinians is Israel’s fault – a framing of the story that the media are only too happy to buy into. The Independent’s editors agreed and fixed the text, which now reads: “The scene in Ramallah is restricted by its limited capabilities, with most events at private houses and small venues.”
Haaretz the ‘most popular newspaper in Israel’
That wasn’t the only glaring error in the article that we got corrected. Haaretz, particularly its English language edition is often the ‘go-to’ media source for foreign journalists and diplomats despite the fact that the Hebrew newspaper has a distinct political agenda, a very low circulation and is certainly not representative of Israeli mainstream public opinion.
So we were surprised to see this:
Haaretz in English may very well be the most popular Israeli media source for The Independent’s journalists but it certainly isn’t Israel’s, particularly as one would expect a Hebrew language newspaper to be far more popular with the locals.
Indeed, Israel Hayom, the free newspaper, is the most popular inside Israel. Even if one were to take global internet editions of Israeli news sources, Haaretz in English is still not as popular as other sites such as The Times of Israel according to Alexa’s website traffic and analytics.
The Independent also fixed this text in response to our complaint, which now refers to “Israel’s English language newspaper Haaretz.”
Thank you to The Independent for correcting the errors so swiftly after we alerted editors.
