Within the span of 12 hours, one Israeli was killed and at least six others were wounded in two separate Palestinian terror attacks.
The first attack occurred on the evening of August 30, when a Palestinian teen from East Jerusalem stabbed a 25-year-old Israeli in the back at the Shivtei Yisrael light rail station. The victim managed to escape before an off-duty Border Police officer shot the terrorist multiple times, ultimately killing him.
Approximately 12 hours later, a Palestinian terrorist rammed a truck into a group of off-duty soldiers walking along the highway near a checkpoint, hit a nearby car and then drove away. Israeli security forces were able to kill the terrorist before he could commit another ramming attack.
In their coverage of these two terror attacks, several news outlets provided vague headlines that left readers with hazy information as to the nature of these attacks.
The Jerusalem Stabbing Attack: Spotlighting the Terrorist, Obscuring the Victim
In the headlines for their reports on the Jerusalem light rail stabbing attack, both the Associated Press (AP) and Agence France-Presse (AFP) wire services focused on the fate of the terrorist while obscuring the identity of his victim and the nature of his attack.
The AP headline highlighted the death of a “Palestinian teen assailant” at the hands of the Israeli police but failed to provide its readers with any context as to what the “assailant” had done and who he had attacked.
It appears that for this esteemed news service, the fate of the terrorist is more newsworthy than either his actions or his victim.
An Israeli civilian is stabbed but @AP‘s headline also focuses instead on the death of the terrorist responsible. https://t.co/yzNNq73kuk pic.twitter.com/yVc7qfzEvT
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 31, 2023
The AFP headline was even more vague, focusing solely on the fate of the terrorist while omitting the fact that the “teenage attacker” was a Palestinian, that his victim was Israeli or that the attack was of a nationalistic character.
Hey @AFP,
🔴 Why focus solely on the perpetrator?
🔴 Who is the attacker?
🔴 Who is his victim?
🔴 What is a "Jerusalem stabbing"?#HeadlineFailhttps://t.co/IaHpbDD1LL pic.twitter.com/KSKpjddWTJ— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 31, 2023
Perhaps the most egregious (but unsurprising) headline on the Jerusalem attack came from Al Jazeera, which not only omitted the fact that an innocent Israeli had been stabbed in the back but left out any mention of an attack altogether.
For anyone reading the Al Jazeera headline, it would appear as if a random Palestinian teenager was killed by the Israel Police for no reason. This is the perfect example of how the Qatar-funded news organization conceals reality in order to promote its anti-Israel narrative.
Related Reading: The ‘Palestinian Exception’: Media Blur Line Between Victim and Aggressor in Terror Coverage
The Ramming Attack: Unidentified Victims & an Absent Terrorist
Similar to its report on the Jerusalem light rail stabbing attack, AFP’s initial headline on the truck ramming attack was equally vague and uninformative.
The news service merely reported that three people were injured in a truck ramming attack, omitting the fact that the terrorist was a Palestinian or that the victims were Israeli.
Even the first paragraph of this report was hazy with the details, merely referring to the attack being committed by a “truck driver” and that “three people” had been injured.
In what appears to be a trend, another @AFP headline fails to mention who the victims are and who carried out the attack. https://t.co/O8FChYfARF pic.twitter.com/lZInw5KnPY
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 31, 2023
In its headline, The Guardian not only omitted the fact that the victims were Israelis but even attempted to minimize the nature of the attack by describing it as “Palestinian motorist drives car into pedestrians.” For all the average reader can tell, this is a simple road accident and not the deliberate mowing down of Israelis by a terrorist bent on killing them.
Hey @guardian, we fixed your headline for you.https://t.co/gYY4DsvgGF pic.twitter.com/DL8G53GlOb
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 31, 2023
Related Reading: Does The Media Define ‘Murder’ & ‘Terrorism’ Differently for Israelis?
If all the information is eventually provided further down in the reports, why is it so important for the headlines to be both accurate and informative?
As studies have shown, a large percentage of news consumers just read the headline and not the entire article.
When media organizations omit vital information from their headlines, they are leaving their readers misinformed and without a proper understanding of the event in question.
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Photo Credits: Jamal Awad/Flash90 and Yonatan Sindel /Flash90
