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.
More than 80 North American news outlets publish an Associated Press correction prompted by CAMERA after the wire service falsely reported that the civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip has exceeded 40,000. The scores of corrections are the most that CAMERA has prompted at once from a single wire service story.
In dozens of stories, AP committed one of the most egregious journalistic transgressions: misattributing a false quote to a source. Tamar Sternthal explains in Times of Israel how a bogus ICJ quote alleging “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza found its way into AP reporting, and how CAMERA put an end to it.
Even as authorities from Sydney to Brooklyn were still investigating and removing pro-Hamas graffiti, the Associated Press engaged in scrubbing of a different sort.
UPDATE: In response to communication from CAMERA, both TIME and Times of Israel correct Associated Press copy which erroneously cited Tel Aviv as shorthand for Israel. Both media outlets now correctly refer to Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
When the International Court of Justice issued an order on January 26 in the “genocide” case between South Africa and Israel, it soon became common knowledge that the ICJ had found it “plausible” that Israel was committing “genocide.” This common knowledge, however, was in fact a myth.
An AP "fact check" report is unironically headlined: "Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war. Here are the facts." Far from supplying the facts, today's "fact check" conceals known facts, bringing us back to the worst of last week's coverage of Hamas' Al Ahli hospital misinformation campaign.
Like an unshakeable addiction, the impulse of mainstream journalists to conceal the terror affiliations of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops remains a persistent feature of reporting at major news outlets. Most recently, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades fighters get a pass at AP and The New York Times.
In a video unveiling a new long-range attack drone, Iran warns in Hebrew and Persian "Prepare your shelters." AP completely ignores that threat, and reports with no qualification that President Raisi "reiterated Iran's stance about friendly relations with 'all countries in the world,'"
After first reporting that no information was immediately available to ascertain whether a Palestinian killed today in Jenin was affiliated with a terror group, AP commendably updates: Mustafa al-Kastouni was a fighter with Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
