Where are the newsroom adults to put a stop to the juvenile practice of compromising journalistic duties when it comes to coverage of Palestinian teen assailants?
According to Iran, Sayyad Khodai was the heroic champion of Shiite sites threatened by Al Qaeda terrorists. According to Israeli press reports, Khodai was the mastermind behind plots to assassinate Israeli civilians. International media report the former and ignore the latter.
Like polluting empty plastic bottles strewn about, international media headlines devoid of key facts litter the information landscape and diminish public enlightenment.
AFP updates with more careful coverage after running a headline which stated as fact the unverified, disputed claim that Israeli troops fatally shot Al Jazeera's Shireen Abu Aqleh.
Numerous Agence France Presse captions about 17-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Zakarneh, fatally wounded by Israeli fire, omit the key information that according to the Israeli army, the teen had fired upon Israeli soldiers.
AFP provides a false symmetry, concealing the glaring asymmetry which defines this latest round of violence, and each round before this one: the Israeli casualties were all terror victims. Virtually all of Palestinian casualties were perpetrators, carrying out violent attacks.
In a striking double standard, AFP finds private Israeli citizens calling for "Death to Arab" newsworthy, but not official and repeated government Hamas praise for "the heroic Beersheba operation."
History shows it doesn't take much for Gaza sources to override the essential journalistic dose of skepticism. After gargantuan flour consumption and Israeli-induced flooding, the latest tall tale hits the MRI machine-bereft territory: soaring mountains of spent batteries as high as the Arc de Triomphe.
AFP points an accusing finger at Israel for not handing over disputed antiquities to the Palestinian Authority while completely ignoring the relevant Oslo Accords.