In the HonestReporting communique from Thursday, we raised concern for Associated Press burying the context for last week’s Israeli airstrike just south of Beirut. Lack of context suggests the IDF acts aggressively for no good reason.
HR reader Ed F. from Winnepeg adds an important point:
In practical terms, burying the context or the Israeli side of events deep in the story often means that such information gets cut by newspaper copy editors. At the newspapers, that is usually not done for reasons of hostility to Israel but due to shortage of space and the exigencies of moving on to the next story and getting the paper out.
The question is: Do the editors at the news agencies who send these stories out over the wires know that?
They probably are aware of this issue. But even without getting cut by copy editors, the buried context is not seen, or properly understood, by the great majority of readers. And that’s bad reporting.
