When Israelis Are Killed, The Media Suddenly Decides To Check Their Facts First

Jenin is the prototypical example of how the media jumps to conclusions--and prints them before checking the facts and (hopefully) printing a correction. In the case of Jenin, Arabs grossly exaggerated the number of Arabs killed--and the media duly reported those numbers. It was not until later that they reported a drastically reduced number for those Palestinian Arabs killed.

Similarly, back in December we read about settlers who burned an Arabs sheep.
We were treated to headlines such as:

• "Jewish settlers cut down productive trees, burn sheep in Nablus villages"
• "'Settlers burn Palestinian's sheep alive'"
• "Farmer: Settlers burned my sheep alive"
• "Palestinian farmer watches settlers burn 19 of his sheep, killing 12"

But in the end, it turned out that it was the Arab farmer himself who had (accidentally) burned his own sheep.

But look at how the media deals with the murder of the Fogel family.

CNN does describe the killer of the Fogel family as a terrorist nor as a militant:

According to a military spokeswoman, an intruder entered the Israeli settlement of Itamar near the northern West Bank city of Nablus around 1 a.m., made his way into the family home and killed the two parents and their three children.

Likewise, The Guardian also refers to the Palestinian attackers as 'intruders':

The attacker or attackers scaled Itamar's perimeter fence, triggering an alarm. Settlement security investigated but failed to notify the Israeli military. The intruders waited inside the settlement for some time after identifying their target, then entered the Fogels' house through a window.

The term intruder is a bizarre one to use for a terrorist, but it looks like the media in this case is not just using a new word in place of terrorist–instead, the media is buying into the idea that it is not clear that a Palestinian Arab did it all.

That is why The Guardian writes it was “believed to be the work of Palestinian militants,” while CNN writes:

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that “all objective data based on the investigation” led the government to believe “the only possible conclusion” was that the settlement murders were a terror attack. He would not elaborate on what evidence was leading investigators to that conclusion.

Contrast those two reports with the first paragraph of the AP report which clearly identifies where the killers came from:

Israel responded defiantly Sunday to a bloody Palestinian assault against West Bank settlers...

The Guardian and CNN follow the lead of Palestinian leaders such as Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Riyad al-Malki--who assures us that Palestinian Arabs do not kill children, raising doubts whether the killers were Palestinian at all.

Or the Hamas website that reports:

Israeli media claimed that angry Palestinian attacked a home in the illegal settlement of Itamar near Nablus and killed Five settlers from one family before he escapes.

So CNN and the Guardian have decided not to jump the gun and play it safe rather than falsely accuse the Palestinian Arabs of killing Israelis.

All I can say is that it’s a heck of a time for the media to suddenly decide they need to start looking for corroboration before they report.

Technorati Tag: Media Bias and Fogel Family.