In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Haaretz has corrected articles in both English and Hebrew which had erroneously claimed that according to initial estimates by Israeli defense officials, some 300 Lebanese died in the Sept. 27 Israeli airstrike which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. In fact, Israeli defense officials did not supply that figure and Lebanese officials cite fatalities as few as six.
Haaretz was the only Israeli media outlet CAMERA found which carried this figure, and the number was subsequently picked up in some foreign media outlets. Foreign Policy, for instance, reported: “Israeli media has reported that as many as 300 people were killed.”
The Foreign Policy hyperlink was to a Sept. 27 article in Haaretz (screenshot at left) which originally carried the headline “Israel targets Hezbollah chief Nasrallah in Massive Beirut Strike; Israeli Officials Estimate 300 Killed.” The accompanying story had claimed: “According to estimates by Israeli defense officials, about 300 people were killed in the air force strike”
A separate Haaretz article on Sept. 28 repeated the same language citing an estimate of 300 killed and attributing the number to Israeli defense officials (“Hassan Nasrallah, Longtime Hezbollah Leader, Killed in Israeli Strike in Beirut“). In addition, the Sept. 28 Hebrew edition cited estimates of 300 dead, without specifying whose estimates.
Yet, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, six people were killed in the strike in which Nasrallah died — not hundreds. As Associated Press reported Sept. 29:
The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people were killed and 91 injured in the strikes Friday that leveled six apartment buildings. Ali Karki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, and other commanders were also killed, the Israeli military said.
Similarly, the Carnegie Endowment also reported Sept. 29:
On September 28, Hezbollah confirmed that Nasrallah had been killed. The same day, Lebanon’s Health Ministry put the casualty toll at 33 killed and 195 injured, yet this included not only those killed or injured in the operation against Nasrallah (numbers that many observers expect will increase in the coming days), but also victims of subsequent night-long Israeli airstrikes against the southern suburbs.
Moreover, the Israel Defense Forces IDF spokespersons’ unit informed CAMERA that it has never provided Haaretz with an estimation of 300 fatalities. The Alma Research Center also told CAMERA that its researchers are unaware of any such statement.
In response to communication with editors, Haaretz acknowledged that an editing error mistakenly resulted in misreporting an initial estimate of 300 casualties, which refers to both killed and wounded, as 300 fatalities. The error was subsequently reproduced in additional articles.
Haaretz commendably has corrected all of the aforementioned cases of misreporting, both in English and Hebrew. For instance, the subheadline which had cited estimates of Israeli defense officials of “300 Killed” now refers to “300 Casualties.”
In addition, editors appended the following clarification to the bottom of the aforementioned articles:
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that around 300 people were killed in the attack on Nasrallah’s headquarters. The text has been updated to clarify that around 300 people were reported as casualties, according to initial estimates.
Finally, in a somewhat strange twist to the story, Haaretz has also amended the words of an interviewee highlighted in the Oct. 2 edition of “Arrivals/Departures” column, a light and entertaining weekly feature interviewing random passengers in Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport (“Rejoice Not When Your Enemy Falls. When Nasrallah Died, Hundreds Died With Him“).
In the feature, interviewee Shalva Kuperman-Ginott of Jerusalem claimed: “Three hundred people died with [Nasrallah].” English edition editors featured her grossly overblown fatality figure in the column’s headline. (The Hebrew edition’s headline did not allege hundreds killed, though it had quoted Kupermann-Ginott referring to 300 dead (“נספו”).)
Though journalism holds quotes as sacred, and almost always proscribes journalists from inserting words within quotation marks which were not identical to the speakers’ language, editors took the liberty of changing Kuperman-Ginott’s statement, in both English and Hebrew, to be more factually correct: “Three hundred people were reported as casualties alongside him.” The updated headline now states: “‘Rejoice Not When Your Enemy Falls. When Nasrallah Died, Hundreds Were Killed or Wounded With Him.'”
Like the news stories, the amended airport interview (in English but not Hebrew) also carries the editor’s note at the bottom.
Rather than committing one journalistic wrong (amending a source’s quote) to fix another journalistic wrong (publishing false information without clarification of the facts), reasonable options to correct the interview would have been to delete Kuperman-Ginoott’s false claim about 300 dead or to parenthetically insert a clarification in the interviewer’s voice clarifying the figure.