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.
The Daily Herald (Chicago area) published a tribute heaping praise on prominent individuals who passed away in the last year, among them Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas. A CAMERA member contacted editors and elicited a thorough printed apology. Below are his letter, the editor's response, the subsequent published editor's note, and an open letter from the editor.
CAMERA prompts a correction on a letter by Marc Springer of Chantilly, Va., who falsely wrote that the majority of Israeli fatalities in the last four years have been soldiers, not civilians. The correction is an important reminder that letters to the editor, just like news articles, must be factually correct, and that media outlets have an obligation to correct erroneous information in letters and op-eds.
CAMERA obtained the following correction at USA Today clarifying that Palestinians targeted pre-1967 Israel, as well as settlements with their rocket attacks.
September 27 update follows. Ever since Reuter's notorious editorial decision not to call terrorists "terrorists" was affirmed following the 9/11 attacks, the news agency has zealously adhered to a policy of softening the face of terrorism. In reporting on the September 22 suicide bombing in Jerusalem's French Hill, it has gone a step further.
In an Aug. 27 Boston Globe column, H.D.S. Greenway erroneously claimed that in a 1996 report written for Benjamin Netanyahu, Richard Perle called for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein "to increase Israel's strategic position." CAMERA alerted the Globe that Perle's report made no such suggestion, and a correction ran yesterday.