Last week HonestReporting documented on social media an AFP article lamenting the deaths of animals in Gaza caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas.
The story, published on June 1, opened with a vivid description of wounded animals and broken enclosures as adding “to the grief and trauma of Gaza residents after last month’s deadly conflict.”
Near the beginning, readers are told: “Neriman, a nine-year-old Palestinian girl, clutched a glass jar holding her goldfish Hoor, delighted it had survived after her other one, Hooriya, died in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City.”
Seeing this, Getty Images, one of the world’s leading visual media companies, has now published a series of photographs on its site of the little girl with her surviving goldfish.
Intriguingly, there are a few minor discrepancies between the details of AFP’s article and those mentioned in the captions of the Getty photo series.
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The following is the text accompanying the pictures on the Getty website:
Activists all over the world shared on social networking sites during the war on Gaza, photos and videos of the Palestinian child, Nana Al-Akkad (8 years), from Khan Yunis, rescuing her own fish in a small aquarium during the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, and the war stopped after 11 days after the ceasefire agreement with Egyptian mediation between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas, which entered into force on May 21, 2013. On June 6, 2021 in Gaza City, Palestine (Photo by Momen Faiz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)”
The girl featured in Getty’s series of photographs is not named as Nariman, but Nana Al-Akkad. Similarly, her age is given as eight, rather as nine, as was the case in the AFP article.
The story also made it into the UAE-based The National. An article published on the site described the scene:
“When an Israeli bomb fell near the house that seven-year-old Nariman lived in with her family in Gaza, they were lucky to escape with their lives.”
To be fair, it may be that the difference of name is because the child has more than one moniker, or a nickname. Similarly, the age discrepancy may simply be due to human error on the part of one or of the journalists. But it is odd that so many discrepancies have surfaced in what seems to be a straightforward story.
All of which begs the question: Have any of the journalists involved in the media coverage actually been to the site, checked the story out, and spoken to Nariman/Nana for themselves? Is this story based entirely on viral videos, without any serious attempt at basic fact-checking whatsoever?
But even more important than individual factual errors is the clear demonstration of the phenomenon of agenda-driven pack journalism, in which multiple reporters cover the same story for no other reason than someone else is covering it.
This is not @TheOnion: After @FRANCE24 came up with “Israel killed my goldfish,” @GettyImages yesterday released a photo series on the matter… 🤦♂️ https://t.co/xhApm0bngi pic.twitter.com/gDle8ipSsL
— Akiva van Koningsveld (@koningsveld) June 7, 2021
Animal welfare is indeed a legitimate topic for journalists to investigate and report upon. Unfortunately, the story of a Palestinian girl losing her pet has been weaponized and taken up by journalists, thus undermining Israel’s basic right to defend itself from Gaza-based terrorist groups led by Hamas.
Meanwhile, far bigger, far more important stories are left untouched by journalists unwilling to think independently.
