Carolynne Wheeler, a freelancer for the Globe and Mail, writes as if she were on the scene of the Sharon-Abbas meeting, stating "Palestinian leaders left the meeting in Mr. Sharon's flag-draped residence in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City grim-faced." Only, she couldn't have been there, because the summit actually took place in the western part of the city, not the Old City. Other journalists have been fired pretending to attend events.
While reporting has improved considerably since CAMERA's 2002 analysis of New York Times coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, readers may still note an imbalance in human interest stories.
Some argue there is an easy way to counter media shortcomings and make Israel's case, but there are profound strategic flaws in efforts to advance public understanding of Israel's circumstances that do not tackle and defeat false and damaging information about the Jewish state.
USA Today presents a misleading, one-sided picture of home
demolitions in Israel's capital in “Jerusalem's future banging on
residents' doors; Several dozen Palestinian homes slated for demolition,”
June 21.
The Los Angeles Times falsely maintains that Palestinians will not be able to travel freely north and south in the West Bank once the Ma'aleh Adumim building plan is implemented. In fact, three routes are available for Palestinian travel in the area, and a fourth is on the way.
Just like the U.N.'s 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism itself became a racist anti-Israel hate fest, the U.N.'s media seminar this week supposedly promoting sober, factual journalism about the conflict turned into platform for anti-Israel distortions and incitement.
After a Chronicle story erroneously referred to the "expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians," a CAMERA letter clarifies that most Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war fled on their own accord to avoid hostilities, or at the urging of Arab leaders.
In a June 7 Los Angeles Times article dealing, to a large extent, with competing Arab and Jewish claims to Jerusalem, Los Angeles Times bureau chief Laura King repeatedly adopts tendentious language which wrongly minimizes Jewish ties to the city.
In response to CAMERA's concerns about an Associated Press article on the wire today covering Temple Mount disturbances, the Jerusalem bureau has responded that it stands by its coverage. Noteworthy, though, is the fact that the service's report today is contradicted by another AP story from 2001.
