With the settlement issue back in the headlines, so came a rush of factual errors. Irrespective of one’s views on the status of settlements, the media still has a responsibility to report accurately.
NEW YORK TIMES
The New York Times led with this headline:
Except that Israel has plans, not to build more settlements, but to build in and expand existing ones.
Following a complaint to the New York Times, the headline was amended to the identical and accurate one that appeared in the print edition of the paper.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The AP ran with this headline:
After contacting the AP, the headline was updated:
Getting the AP to amend its headline is particularly important given the enormous global reach that the wire service has with its stories republished by countless numbers of media outlets.
(Note that the subsequent headline and the story itself have both since been updated further.)
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES
But the worst error was committed by the IBT, both in the headline and the text of its story.
“Hundreds of illegals settlements?!”
But it got worse.
Now the IBT was quoting a figure of 5,600 more settlements, even linking to the Jerusalem Post as its source.
Yet the JPost was accurately reporting 5,600 more residential units, a far cry from thousands of new settlements.
The IBT corrected the error when notified by HonestReporting. While the terminology of “illegal settlement units” is hardly positive, it nonetheless represents an improvement from the astonishingly inaccurate original.
Please keep your eyes out for factual errors of this kind in your local media outlets and let us know through our Red Alert page.
