Accuracy and accountability are among the most important tenets of journalism. In combination, they mean media organizations are expected to publish or broadcast forthright corrections after sharing inaccurate information. The following corrections are among the many prompted by CAMERA’s communication with reporters and editors.
CAMERA prompts correction of an Agence France Presse article which inexplicably misidentified Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, as the holiest day in the Jewish year. Judaism's holiest day is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
CBS's false depiction of Israel's demolition of a handful of illegally tents and pens dangerously built in a long-established military firing zone as the destruction of an entire Palestinian village is one small step away from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's vitriolic "ethnic cleansing" charge.
News coverage of Malawi's announcement about opening an embassy in Jerusalem included a flurry of inaccurate articles, most misreporting that the nation would be the first African nation to open an embassy in the capital. While Malawi be the only African nation with an embassy in Jerusalem, several others existed in the past, and were closed after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
AFP abandons its "duty to seek the truth and not passively report information as it is presented to us" when it reports without challenge or clarification the false claim that Israel's army destroyed all of Neve Dekalim's hothouses before the 2005 disengagement.
In April, with the global battle to contain the spread of Covid-19 in full swing, CAMERA elicited a record 27 corrections in a variety of news outlets: from major media including The New York Times, Associated Press and NBC, to non-Western and alternative news sources.
Ran Saar, CEO of the Maccabi HMO, is the putative source for the widely reported figure that 75,000 residents of the ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak are likely infected with coronavirus. Media outlets ignore that Maccabi officials cited a miscalculation, and said the actual figure is just 10 percent of that. The executive director said Maccabi has "no idea" how many are infected.
CAMERA prompts correction of multiple AFP photo captions which had erroneously referred to the Western Wall as "Judaism's holiest site." In fact, the Temple Mount is Judaism's most sacred site, which is why AFP usually does refer to the wall as "the holiest site where Jews can pray."
CAMERA prompts correction of an Agence France Presse article which erroneously reported that a Knesset committee "rejected" the government's plan to track Coronavirus patients and locate those with whom they've come into contact. The committee did not rule, as it did not have enough time to debate the measures.
AFP demonstrates poor working knowledge of Judaism coupled with shoddy editing, erroneously reporting that Israel's ban on gatherings of more than 10 people, a measure to combat the coronavirus pandemic, makes it impossible for the Jewish prayer quorum, or "miyan," as the leading news called it, to convene.
UPDATED: AFP amends multiple captions which had stated as fact that the Israeli army fired live ammunition during a clash in Nablus despite the fact that Palestinian witnesses and the Israeli military agree that only rubber bullets and tear gas were used.
