After deadly Palestinian attacks against Israelis triggered by false claims that Israel is threatening the al-Aqsa Mosque, the New York Times published a mostly mangled history of the situation and of the Temple Mount, relying in part on an "expert" who is also an outspoken supporter of boycotting Israel. 
Relying on the NGO Bimkom, Reuters incorrectly reports that there have been no building plans and no legal building in Shuafat in 45 years. A spokeswoman for Jerusalem's engineering department responds with the facts. Reuters posits that the barrier in eastern Jerusalem has heightened partition of the city. Readers need not be confused by the contradictory fact that Arab families are moving into Jewish neighborhoods and increasing their ties to Israel. 
One of the main obstacles to previous peace-making efforts in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been the issue of dividing Jerusalem. There is no doubt that these competing demands and claims will be difficult to reconcile. It is made all the more difficult by a media that errs or misleads on the topic. This backgrounder addresses common media misrepresentations regarding Jerusalem. 
Weeks after Ha'aretz published, and then corrected, the wildly inaccurate front-page apartheid poll article, the English edition runs an egregiously mislabeled map and a tendentious headline. Where are the editors? 
Edmund Sanders article today in the Los Angeles Times about a purported increase in attempts by Jewish worshipers to pray on the Temple Mount unnecessarily exacerbates tensions by publishing false Palestinian accusations as fact. 
On August 20, 2012, a group of 50 young Palestinians attacked a Christian housing project. The attack went largely unnoticed by the same outlets that covered the desecration of a monastery in Latroun, Israel. 
In his Time magazine cover story, Karl Vick provides a simplistic black vs. white depiction of secular-haredi battles, ignoring figures and social trends which point to a newly emerging phenomenon. 
The May issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine features an article, "Jerusalem by the Book," in which the author returns to Jerusalem with a guidebook written by his parents in 1951. Unfortunately, when he ventures into territory liberated by Israel in 1967, the author steps into politics and outside the confines of journalistic accuracy. 
Lynne Hybels from Willow Creek Church told a sad and moving tale about a home demolition in Jerusalem. It was not the whole story.