After an Israeli airstrike targeted three senior Hamas military operatives in Gaza, the Hamas government quickly told the media dozens of Palestinians were killed in the strike.
“40 martyrs and 60 injured were recovered,” announced Mohammed Al-Mughair, an official with the Hamas government’s Civil Defense branch. Others are still missing, he added. The claim was dutifully echoed, with the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, and Associated Press among those relaying the official’s claim of “dozens” or “40” killed. CBS News went further, reporting on 40 dead as not just a claim, but an established fact.
But it was not a fact. Not only did the Israeli military dispute the number, but the Hamas health ministry, too, later shared the much lower figure of 19 confirmed dead. Among those casualties are the head of Hamas’s Aerial Unit, the head of Hamas intelligence’s Observation and Targets Department, and another Senior Hamas Terrorist, Israel believes. (Hamas policy is to conceal whether casualties in Gaza are fighters or civilians.)
When Hamas reversed itself, so did the press. The Washington Post volunteered the most detail about the changes:
An Israeli strike Tuesday on Mawasi, a coastal tent encampment in southern Gaza that Israeli forces designated a humanitarian zone, killed at least 19 people and injured more than 60, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Rescue workers were still trying to reach people trapped under rubble and debris, it added. A Gaza Civil Defense official, Mohammed al-Mughair, put the death toll at 40 earlier Tuesday. Ahmad al-Naqa, another Civil Defense official, said later in the day that the previous number was an estimate and that the Health Ministry reports the final numbers.
The rest of the above outlets, too, ran updated headlines reflecting the health ministry’s revised figure. Except for one, that is.
Still now, a day after the others updated their reporting, and a day after CBS head of standards Claude Milne was informed of the erroneous coverage, CBS News continues leave readers in the dark. “Israeli strikes in Gaza’s al-Mawasi humanitarian zone kill dozens of Palestinians sheltering in tent camp,” its headline adamantly states, while the story that follows says nothing of the health ministry’s lower figures.
Those, apparently, are the network’s standards.