Under New Editor, the Wall Street Journal
Is Misreporting Facts About Israel
by Andrea Levin, Algemeiner, July 31, 2024:
Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker is making changes at the venerable publication, pushing more “life-style stories with snappy headlines” in the news section — and she’s reportedly downsized, if not gutted, the standards desk that handles corrections. She’s eliminated an editing team “responsible for prepublication review of sensitive stories.”’
The new direction, as described in a National Review story, resonates alarmingly for many readers of the newspaper who have long counted on its fact-focused, serious coverage, but find something very different today. For many, the increasingly skewed, factually shoddy coverage of Israel is a striking indicator of the wider shift in the paper’s tenor and content.
Reporter Omar Abdel-Baqui could be the poster child for this new Wall Street Journal.
One “sensitive” story of his with far too little fact-checking and editorial oversight was a June 15 account focused on the disappointments of young Gen Z Palestinians. Much of the bias of the piece stems from relentless omission of critical information. The online title, “Gen Z Palestinians See Door Slamming Shut on Coexistence with Israel,” perfectly conveys the deceptions and distortions that follow.
What the article fails to mention is that many Palestinians are themselves the door-slammers. There’s no hint in the story that the Palestinian leadership has repeatedly refused an independent and peaceful state next to the Jewish State of Israel. There’s no suggestion the melancholy Gen Z Palestinian teens who are cast as buffeted by upheaval and uncertainty should blame their own autocratic leaders for ruining their lives. (The print version was similarly titled: “Gen Z Palestinians Have Little Hope for Peace.”)…
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How the BBC and Le Monde Reported on Hezbollah’s Killing
of 12 Druze Children
On Saturday, July 27, Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel, hitting the Druze town of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights. At least one of the rockets hit a soccer pitch where children were playing. Twelve children and young teenagers were killed; 44 were wounded. The BBC had a most peculiar way of headlining its report, and many were furious with yet another demonstration of BBC bias. More on this contretemps can be found here.
The BBC has been condemned for its reporting of Saturday’s deadly Hezbollah rocket attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.
The BBC’s article about the attack was headlined: “Ten [now 12] dead in rocket attack on Israeli-occupied Golan.”
The headline, which was altered after a few hours, did not refer to Hezbollah, the Druze community, or that the rocket struck children playing football, while it appeared to imply a political justification for the killings.
What conceivable reason was there for the headline to mention the “Israeli-occupied Golan”? The suggestion is that Hezbollah launched its attack because Israel had “occupied” the Golan, and this was merely part of the “resistance” by Hezbollah to those Israeli “occupiers. “
The strike – which killed 12 young people aged 10-20 years old playing football in the Druze village – marks the deadliest day in Israel since October 7. The IDF has since identified the rocket fired from Lebanon as an Iranian-made weapon….
Hezbollah has denied sending any rockets toward Majdal Shams. The IDF, and the Druze villagers of Majdal Shams, know better. Shrapnel from the rocket clearly identifies it as an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket. The BBC said nothing about the identification of the rocket, nor about Hezbollah’s ridiculous claim that it had nothing to do with the rocket attack.
Note that in the headline the BBC did not mention Hezbollah, nor identify the victims; we learn only that there had been “ten [now 12] dead” in a “rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan.” Nor did it mention that all of the victims were children, Druze children. Readers are left wondering exactly who had been killed, and who had launched that attack. They might even have been misled by the headline, coming away thinking that the attack was a case of the IDF, trying to strike targets in Lebanon, but having one of its rockets falling short on Majdal Shams.
War studies lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Andrew Fox, compared the headline with another BBC story written on the same day about an IDF strike in Gaza which stated, “Israeli strike on Gaza ‘kills 30’”.
Why was it when the IDF strikes a Hamas post it “kills 30,” but the children killed at Majdal Shams, unidentified in the BBC headline, “died”?
Fox called the headlines “utterly despicable”, commenting on Twitter/X: “BBC headline does not mention that the strike in Israel was on a playground and children were killed. Nice cheeky little dig with ‘Israeli-occupied’, too. They frame the other [the Israeli attack on a school taken over by Hezbollah fighters] as if this was an ordinary school. Hamas uses schools as cover for their fighters.”
The BBC accused the IDF of attacking a school. It’s summer; school is out. The attack was not on a school, but on a school building that had been taken over by Hamas. There is a difference.
The BBC has since updated its headline to reflect the ongoing news story: “Israel hits Hezbollah targets after football pitch strike kills 12 young people.”…
Note that the BBC still can’t describe the victims properly as “children.” They are “young people.” Early 20s? Who knows?
The outrage of war studies lecturer Andrew Fox of the Royal Military Academy, comedian Sasha Baron-Cohen, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, and many others, forced to rephrase its headline to the story. Now the poisonous mention of the “Israeli-occupied” Golan was removed. But still Hezbollah is not directly named as the source of the homicidal rockets; we are left to draw our own conclusions, given that we now learn that “Israel hits Hezbollah targets after the football pitch strike kills 12 young people.” Why couldn’t the BBC have simply stated that “Israel responds after Hezbollah strikes schoolyard, killing 12 Druze children”? Or even more to the point, why not forthrightly state that “Hezbollah fires Iranian rocket at a schoolyard in Majdal Shams, killing 12 Druze children”?
The BBC has been contacted for comment.
So far, the BBC has yet to respond.
The BBC, however, was not the only offender.. The most prestigious paper in France, Le Monde, summed up its report on the Majdal Shams massacre by Hezbollah in this way:
Israel: douze morts à la suite des tirs de roquettes sur le Golan annexé. L’Etat hebreu mène des frappes contre le Hezbollah dans le Liban.
In English:
Israel: twelve rocket attacks on the annexed Golan. The Jewish state is carrying out strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What is left out of Le Monde’s version? First, that the twelve dead were Druze children, who had been playing on a soccer pitch. Second, they were killed, so why not say it: not “douze morts” (twelve dead), but the more accurate “douze enfants tués” (twelve children killed)”? Where? “At the Druze village of Majdal Shams.” Just as the BBC thought it important to include in its headline that the attack took place on the “Israeli-occupied Golan,” so Le Monde thought it important to remind its readers that the rockets were fired on the “annexed Golan,” as if that had any bearing on the deaths of the twelve children. And why did neither the BBC nor Le Monde let their respective audiences know that the rocket that killed the Druze children was a Falaq-I rocket that been supplied to Hezbollah by Iran?
Here is how the Le Monde headline to its report on the incident ought to have read:
“Iran-made Hezbollah rocket kills twelve Druze children, wounds 44, in attack on soccer pitch in Majdal Shams.” That contains the most important and leaves out that which is irrelevant. C’est pas difficile, Le Monde editors. Not hard at all, BBC reporters at Bush House. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, but please try harder. Don’t disappoint us yet again.
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Washington Post portrays Israel as aggressor in
story on Hizballah strike in northern Israel
This is entirely consistent with the establishment media practice, which is always to portray Israel as the aggressor.
Washington Post admits it ‘did not provide adequate context’
on front page Israel-Hezbollah escalation story
by Brian Flood and Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News, July 30, 2024:
The Washington Post admitted it “did not provide adequate context” to a widely criticized front page that portrayed Israel as the aggressor against the Hezbollah terror group.
Hezbollah launched its deadliest assault against Israel since the Oct. 7 attack in the northern town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on Saturday, resulting in at least 12 dead and dozens injured, all of them children and teens who were playing on a soccer field.
The “Democracy Dies in Darkness” paper published an editor’s note on Tuesday after facing intense backlash when Monday’s front page featured a large image of Israelis mourning the death of 11-year-old Alma Ayman Fakhr al-Din with the headline “Israel Hits Targets In Lebanon.”
The headline, which prompted widespread backlash with everyone from Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., to Israel Defense Forces, was referring to Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hezbollah that occurred Sunday….
“The headline and subheadline that accompanied a July 29 Page One photo and article about Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon did not provide adequate context. The headlines should have noted that the Israeli strikes were a response to a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The photo depicted mourning for one of those victims, as the caption noted,” Post editors wrote….
Is there no legacy media in America with a conscience? Are they all godless reporters and editors? When and where are all the intelligent, honest, and god-fearing reporters weeded out of journalism?
This is incredibly serious and dishonest. We, the people, are being lied to, mis-led, and managed by people we would never follow if we dared to get to know them. People which make James Bond villains seem like amateurs. God help us! We need truth and integrity to come back into the media.
Thank God for Elon Musk and X!
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