While coming from different starting points, two journalistic misdeeds— drawing a false moral equivalency and applying a double standard — end up with the same reprehensible result: minimizing and obscuring Palestinian terrorism. Coverage of the deadly Palestinian terror attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue versus a fatal Israeli arrest raid in Jenin provide a case in point.
AFP's Arabic service takes part in the World Cup's political games, with reports carefully omitting inconvenient facts unfavorable to the Qatari hosts although this information had appeared in the news agency's coverage in other languages.
In response to communication from CAMERA, Times of Israel amends an Agence France Presse article claiming that the Israeli-led blockade has "suffocated" the Gaza Strip's fishing industry, commendably adding data demonstrating that the fishermen's catch has significantly grown in the last 15 years.
AFP amends a caption which had erroneously referred to Palestinian prisoners "who died in Israeli prisons." Eight out of the nine pictured prisoners died in medical facilities from diseases.
Several hours after Tiran Fero's family reported that Palestinian gunmen killed the Israeli Druze high schooler by unhooking his ventilator in a Jenin hospital, leading media outlets continued to ignore their account. And then CAMERA stepped in.
After having previously displayed keen interest in the welfare of animals in the Palestinian territories, Agence France Presse, Reuters and Associated Press suddenly bolted when the mayor of Hebron offered a 20 shekel bounty for each slaughtered dog.
AP highlights the fatal shooting of four Palestinian gunmen attacking Israeli troops as a "deadliest episode," even as the news agency downplays the fatalities' violence and terror affiliations. But the murder of three Israelis sitting in a Tel Aviv bar? Until CAMERA intervened, the only thing the wire service found deadly about that incident was the cops' killing of the Palestinian gunman "who attacked a bar."
CAMERA prompts AFP to amend captions which had initially omitted that Palestinian Hamad Mustafa Hussein Abu Jelda, fatally injured in a gun battle with Israeli troops, belonged to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a designated terror organization
Not for the first time, Agence France Presse erased Nasser Abu Hamid's seven murder convictions, presenting him only as a Palestinian prisoner sick with cancer while withholding any indication about why he might be in jail.
Given that the Palestinian government has choices about how to spend its funds, AFP's assertion that "There are insufficient funds to meet the needs of the territory's intellectually disabled" is not a factual statement. It's editorializing. The PA has chosen terrorists over the intellectually disabled.
