UPDATE
Following complaints from HonestReporting readers, The Independent has finally responded:
I do not agree that it is misleading to refer to Mr Abunimah as an expert on the question of Israeli politics in regard to matters such as these. He is a prominent voice on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and that he is not impartial and many object to his views does not render it inaccurate to describe him as an “expert”. That said, I agree that we should identify him to readers so that they can place his comments in context. We should have done this from the outset, and the caption has now been amended to name him.
Indeed, the caption now says: “Mr Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian American journalist, predicts Israel will be treated like a ‘pariah state’ in 2018.”
While this is not a wholly satisfactory result, The Independent has done the bare minimum necessary to address the lack of transparency in the original caption. Sadly the updated caption does little to reveal Abunimah’s real background.
Fresh from winning the Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award, The Independent is off to a storming start to 2018. A story concerning the Likud Central Committee’s vote calling for the state to annex parts of the disputed territories includes the following embedded video and caption.
Who is this “expert” who “predicts Israel will be treated like a ‘pariah state’ in 2018”?
Only one of the main movers in attempting to portray Israel as a pariah state. Ali Abunimah is the co-founder and executive director of the anti-Israel hate site Electronic Intifada.
Abunimah has a long track record as a prominent figure in anti-Israel campaigns and he’s certainly not the first person one would consider to be an “expert” on Israeli politics or the internal machinations of the Likud Party.
That the video clip is from Al Jazeera goes some way towards explaining why he appears as a talking head. However, there’s some serious problems with The Independent’s use of the 30-second clip.
Nowhere does The Independent identify Abunimah, nor any official positions he may hold. Only at the very end do we hear the Al Jazeera interviewer thank a “Mr. Abunimah” for being on the show.
During the interview Abunimah accuses Israel of promoting apartheid and not being interested in peace. Yet, while he is attacking Israel, The Independent’s readers still have no idea who he is.
This amounts to a gross lack of transparency on the part of The Independent, one of the 8 Categories of Media Bias that you can find out more about here.
At a minimum, The Independent needs to add some missing information to its caption. At best, the video deserves to be removed from the story in its entirety.
We’ve requested exactly that from The Independent.
Help us get the correction. Send your comments through The Independent’s complaint form – https://independentnews.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
