Misleading and Accusatory Headline in The Times

UPDATE

In response to this communique and a request from HonestReporting, The Times of London, to its credit, has promptly amended its headline, which now reads:

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Has the evil Israeli regime silenced a dissident? Is Israel persecuting human rights activists? Isn’t that the conclusion you would draw from this headline in The Times of London?

In fact, the new Israeli government has proposed a law to limit foreign funding of non-governmental organizations. Most of those that would be affected would be those NGOs considered to be on the left of the political spectrum.

It’s perfectly legitimate to argue the merits or otherwise of such a law and, indeed, that is what the Knesset will be doing if and when such a law comes to be discussed, as is the norm in a parliamentary democracy.

But that’s not what The Times’s headline suggests. The Times dispenses with any notion of being innocent before being proven guilty and convicts Israel for a alleged “crime” that has yet to even occur.

As The Times of Israel writes in its own report on proposed controversial legislation:

With a razor-thin 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, it is unclear how much success the new coalition will have trying to pass new legislation. The NGO bill, for example, will have the support of Avigdor Liberman’s six-seat party Yisrael Beytenu, sitting in the opposition, but not necessarily that of other parties, even those within the coalition.

[sc:graybox ]We’ve requested that The Times amend its headline. You can add your call by sending an email to [email protected].