Al Hurra Clarifies Palestinian Fatalities Were Islamic Jihad Combatants

Last month, CAMERA Arabic prompted correction in Al Hurra after the publicly-funded U.S. news outlet reproduced an Arabic article from Agence France Presse which failed to report that two Palestinians killed near Jenin were fighters belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terror organization.

Whitewashing the men’s affiliation with a US-proscribed terrorist organization, the AFP story which Al Hurra published May 10 had reported:

[The] Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the deaths of Ahmad Jamal Tawfeeq Assaf (19) and Rani Waleed Ahmad Qatanat (24) by Israeli military bullets in Qabatiya in the Jenin governorate, northern West Bank.

On the very same day, PIJ issued an announcement claiming the two as “our martyred heroes.”

Notably, major wire services like Reuters (in English and Arabic) and AP acknowledged the two fatalities’ PIJ affiliation.

As part of Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. (MBN), which in turn operates under a grant from United States Agency for Global Media, Al Hurra is subject to USAGM’s Standards and Principles which stipulate that content should be “consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.” Indicating terrorist affiliations of casualties in conflict would seem to fall under this rubric.

Regarding accuracy, the following appears in USAGM’s code of ethics:

Factual errors – whether on-air or in print – should be corrected as quickly as possible after their discovery. … Errors of fact that do not significantly affect a story should nevertheless be corrected on the same program on which they were first broadcast – or on the same site as they were originally published – as soon as it is practical to do so. All errors should be brought to the attention of the President or the President’s designee. [Emphases added.]

Al Hurra editors commendably amended the article, which now reads: