There is a meme (a humorous image generally posted on social media) that has been widely shared online for years. It depicts a black-and-white image of 16th US President Abraham Lincoln upon which a superimposed quotation reads: “The problem with quotes found on the internet is that they are often not true.”
While it is clear to everyone that it is a fake Lincoln quote for the blindingly obvious reason that the internet was invented more than 100 years after his death, the same cannot be said of every false quotation.
Although most that appear online are the work of anonymous social media users, some of the world’s most trusted and influential media organizations have also been guilty of publishing dubious citations, particularly in stories about Israel.
Whether deliberate or by mistake, a mistranslation or a misquotation, here are some of the most outrageous examples of false quotes published by the media since the start of the war.
1. BBC News Claims Israel ‘Targeting’ Medics
In November 2023, the BBC was forced to issue an apology after one of its anchors misquoted a Reuters report during a live broadcast to claim that the IDF was targeting medical professionals during its raid on Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, which had been used as a Hamas command center.
Reuters correctly quoted an IDF spokesman: “Our medical teams and Arabic-speaking soldiers are on the ground to ensure that these supplies reach those in need.”
However, the BBC instead announced on-air that the Israeli military was “targeting people including medical teams as well as Arab speakers.”
An apology was later read out by a second presenter, who announced: “What we should have said is that IDF forces included medical staff and Arabic speakers for this operation. We apologize for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”
The IDF clearly states it is bringing medical teams & Arabic speakers into Al-Shifa Hospital to help patients.@BBCNews reinterprets it to libel the IDF as *targeting* medical teams & Arabic speakers.
Just how much lower can the BBC go? https://t.co/I9kVy3MC87
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 15, 2023
2. Israel’s ‘Genocidal’ Intent
In January, staff writer at The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg, penned a piece headlined, ‘What Constitutes a Smoking Gun?‘ in part reference to the case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
Rosenberg discussed comments made by the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in the early days of the war in which he allegedly declared that Israel was “fighting human animals” and that “Gaza won’t return to what it was before… We will eliminate everything.”
The remark was suggested by the likes of NPR and the BBC as evidence of Israel’s intention to violate international humanitarian law.
The major problem with this, Rosenberg pointed out, was that the quote attributed to Gallant was inaccurate.
What Gallant actually said when he addressed a group of soldiers just three days after the Hamas massacre was: “Gaza will not return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.”
Rosenberg explained:
This isn’t a matter of interpretation or translation. Gallant’s vow to ‘eliminate it all’ was directed explicitly at Hamas, not Gaza. One doesn’t even need to speak Hebrew, as I do, to confirm this: The word Hamas is clearly audible in the video […]
And yet, the misleadingly truncated version of Gallant’s quote has not just been circulated on NPR and the BBC. The New York Times has made the same elision twice, and it appeared in The Guardian, in a piece by Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch. It was also quoted in The Washington Post, where a writer ironically claimed that Gallant had said “the quiet part out loud,” while quietly omitting whom Gallant was actually talking about.”
As Rosenberg observed, the Gallant misquoting error had profound consequences — it “misled readers, judges, and politicians.”
3. The ‘500 Dead’ in Hospital Blast
The Al-Ahli Hospital blast was perhaps the most outrageous example of poor journalism since the onset of the war.
Numerous respected media organizations abandoned basic journalistic due diligence and immediately blamed Israel for “striking” the medical facility and killing hundreds of civilians in the process.
Evidence quickly emerged that a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket was responsible and the death toll was nowhere near 500.
However, author and journalist David Zweig noticed that this was not the only media malpractice that occurred in the reportage of the Ah-Ahli explosion.
In an article on his Substack, Zweig questioned where the “500 killed” line that was uncritically parroted by the media had originated.
After tracking down where the first mention of this figure occurred (in a social media post by Qatari mouthpiece Al Jazeera), Zweig said there was “zero evidence” that was what the Hamas-run health ministry had said.
Zweig explained:
Beyond the evidentiary particulars in the debate over the origin of the blast is the question of whether news outlets should uncritically report claims from Hamas, including, or perhaps especially, when it provides statistics […]
Yet assessing whether or not Hamas’s claims are credible is a step beyond the most basic consideration: Did the media accurately report what a Hamas spokesperson said?”
Zweig hypothesizes that Al Jazeera’s English account published the false information based on an interview given by Ashraf Al-Qidra, a spokesman in Gaza’s health ministry.
Here’s a thread of all the news articles from outlets that were incredibly quick to blame Israel, taking statements from Hamas at face value. 🧵@CNN quick reminder, the Health Ministry in Gaza is run by Hamas. pic.twitter.com/wl5CynI3q1
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 17, 2023
4. Isaac Herzog’s ‘Entire Nation’ Comments
Sometimes misquoting is not done by altering the words of a statement, but by omitting parts of a statement to alter its overall meaning or intention.
This was true of the remarks made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog at a news conference held just five days after the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Speaking to reporters, Herzog said that he held “an entire nation” responsible for the massacre, which he later stressed in an op-ed was a reference to the many Palestinian civilians who also took part in the killings and sexual assaults inside Israel, as well as the crowds in Gaza who desecrated the bodies of dead Israelis that were brought back as trophies.
In the same October 12 press conference, Herzog said there was no excuse for killing innocent civilians, and confirmed Israel’s commitment to respecting the international laws of war.
Yet, the comments from Herzog that found their way into news reports were the former, with media outlets paraphrasing them in headlines such as, ‘Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets‘.
President Herzog later criticized the South African prosecution that brought a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice for knowingly twisting his words to suggest genocidal intent on Israel’s part in the war.
5. CBS Misquotes the Pope
As is tradition on the Christian holiday Easter Sunday, Pope Francis presided over Mass in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican and delivered his “Urbi et Orbi” blessing from the balcony.
During the speech, he addressed the war in Gaza and called for a ceasefire and for the “prompt release of the hostages seized on 7 October last and for an immediate cease-fire in the Strip.”
Yet, when CBS News reported the Pope’s address, the word “hostages” had been substituted for “prisoners.”
It was a baffling decision that suggested CBS News saw some kind of equivalence between the innocent Israelis kidnapped on October 7 and the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for whom they may be swapped under the terms of a deal with Hamas.
It is a subtle mistake but an insidious one.
Hey, @CBSNews, your translation of the Pope’s Easter message isn’t infallible.
He did not refer to “prisoners” taken from Israel on Oct. 7 — he correctly referred to them as hostages.
Please correct the error.https://t.co/S9KG3w74TZ
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 1, 2024
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