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.
Ashraf Ibrahim, killed in a gunbattle with Israeli troops, was a Palestinian intelligence officer. He also moonlighted as a fighter with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a designated terrorist organization affiliated with Fatah. News stories reported the former work while leaving out the latter.
CAMERA prompts quick improvements after AP initially buried the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade affiliation of three fighters killed this morning near Nablus and underreported the number of combatants killed earlier this month in Gaza.
CAMERA prompts improvement of AP captions about a Palestinian killed at a checkpoint after the texts initially omitted the army's information that Abdullah Qalalweh attempted to attack a soldier and ignored warning shots to retreat.
AP's "clarifying" 2022 photos essay throws the news agency's anti-Israel obsession into sharp relief, putting clashes during Shireen Abu Akleh's funeral ahead of iconic Ukraine war images, leaving Iran out of the frame, and recasting an Islamic Jihad commander as a victim.
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.
Associated Press today commendably amends incomplete captions which had initially only stated that Palestinian Haitham Shuham was shot dead by Israeli troops while failing to report why. An Israeli soldier fatally shot Shuham after he wounded a soldier, slamming a hammer into his face.
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."
By withholding the essential "detail" that Islamic Jihad claimed Salama Abed as one of its commanders, AP advances the false narrative of "war on Gaza," as opposed to war on a terror organization. UPDATE: In response to CAMERA's persistent communication, AP adds that Abed belonged to Islamic Jihad.
Islamic Jihad claimed Dherar al-Kafrini, killed during an Israeli arrest raid in Jenin, as "our heroic martyr." For Associated Press, that makes the young terrorist a prime candidate for a biographical touch up.
