On Monday, two Israeli soldiers were wounded in a Palestinian car ramming attack northwest of Ramallah. The IDF troops opened fire in response, killing two of the terrorists and injuring a third.
Despite Palestinian claims that this was a simple road accident, the discovery of Molotov cocktails in the vehicle coming shortly after the firebombing of a nearby road by three young Palestinian men would leave little doubt as to the nature of the incident.
This is The Guardian‘s headline:
Note how — despite the fact that the Israeli soldiers were the targets of a deliberate attack — the headline turns those soldiers into the aggressors and the Palestinians into victims. It is not clarified who was responsible for the car ramming.
For good measure, “military says” can only cast doubt on whether this incident even happened at all.
And consider that the subhead echoes the Palestinian Authority’s claim of a “brutal execution.”
Headlines matter because people tend to scan them and only read the articles that catch their interest. If all that people know about this incident comes from scrolling through their social media feeds and seeing that headline, what conclusions would they draw?
Related reading: News Literacy: Why Headlines Matter
This was a clear cut attack on soldiers, but The Guardian’s combination of headline and subhead suggests a murky incident involving trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.
We filed a complaint with The Guardian. Watch this space.
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