Bungled Headline of the Day

UPDATE Nov. 30: Well isn't this splendid? More prime examples of Big Media's penchant for moral equivalence at The Scotsman and Montreal…

By November 29, 2011

UPDATE Nov. 30: Well isn’t this splendid? More prime examples of Big Media’s penchant for moral equivalence at The Scotsman and Montreal Gazette:

* * *

Lebanese terrorists fire rockets at Israel. And what’s The Guardian‘s headline?

On a purely factual level, the headline’s off because Israel retaliated with some very limited artillery fire —  and certainly not with rockets.

But on a deeper level, why does The Guardian have such a burning need to paint the aggressor and the defender as morally equivalent? Does it make no difference to the paper who started it — much less why?

Indeed, this video on the same web page focuses exclusively on the rocket strike. In the big picture, the Israeli response was incidental.

© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025

Pesach Benson

Pesach Benson

A Baltimore native, Pesach was with HonestReporting from 2011 to 2020. He edited the Israel Daily News Stream and authored the e-book, Red Lines: HonestReporting’s 8 Categories of Media Bias. Before moving to Israel in 1995, he worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times. Pesach has a B.A. in political science from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, where he was executive editor of the campus newspaper.

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