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.
July 1 update follows. With AP photographers around the world producing 1,000 photographs of breaking news daily, it is puzzling that AP would resort to distributing old file photos of events that have no apparent connection to the day's events. But that is exactly what AP did on June 19, 2004, re-releasing five file unrelated photos from the Gaza Strip with only a biased caption in common.
July 2 update follows. The foreign desk at the Associated Press wire service apparently has no mechanism in place to correct factual errors. Over the last year, evidence regarding more than half a dozen straight-forward substantive errors was passed from editor to editor until it fell by the wayside. This was the case in a June 10 error by correspondent Ali Daraghmeh, who falsely reported that in the West Bank, "Israel does not allow Palestinian officers to patrol in uniform."
In their evening broadcasts of June 22, ABC and NBC reported as fact that Israel killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that the circumstances surrounding their deaths were disputed.