Fact Checking in Real Time
The Media’s Gaza Hospital Failures
There was an editor once who said something very simple more than a few years ago:
“Just because someone says something doesn’t mean we have to put it in the paper.”
Makes sense and is an obvious, basic minimal standard for the media to meet.
A standard that was not met by the vast majority of Big Media a few days ago when it went with insta-headlines like “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.”
That was the first New York Times headline following the Gaza hospital explosion. The paper then stumbled through a coupe of stealth edits, but still the damage was done: the world was told Israel had blown up a hospital and there was no putting that back in the bottle.
The next day, CNN was still peddling equivocal nonsense like this: https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/middleeast/gaza-hospital-explosion-israel-wwk-explainer-intl/index.html .
The article still somehow lent credence to the claim while simultaneously showing all the ways it could be wrong.
The story led to worldwide protests and much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the deluded pro-Hamas crowd in the United States. And wailing is not an understatement – here’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib going full toddler meltdown about it – remember, she’s in Congress:
.
NPR has somehow managed to twist the story into another example of viral misinformation making matters worse https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1207173798/fake-accounts-old-videos-and-rumors-fuel-chaos-around-gaza-hospital-explosion .
From the piece: “As more evidence has emerged, including photos of the blast site and videos from the time of the explosion, the majority of independent analysts say the damage is not consistent with a standard Israeli airstrike.
But in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the shifting accounts in news outlets and the rapid spread on social media of unverified information, old videos, and bogus eyewitness accounts fueled speculation, suspicion, and outrage — and, experts say, are making it more difficult to establish accountability for the tragedy.”
At least it mentions “shifting accounts in news outlets” before eventually blaming Elon Musk’s X-Twitter – and not themselves and every other major media outlet - for the “confusion.”
And the phrase “not consistent with a standard Israeli airstrike” is not the same thing as saying “Israel didn’t do it” (it’s also creepily reminiscent of the 51 spies letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop having “all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation,” but I digress.)
But fog of war, changing stories, maybe even a bit of rush to publish – these factors make the coverage more of an innocent mistake rather than a concerted attempt to stoke anti-Israeli hate?
Not in this case – not even close.
First, the fact that any news organization should simply take the word of Hamas and print what they say (see above) is reprehensible. They, shall we say, have a rather specific interest in assigning blame elsewhere and have not exactly proven themselves a “trusted source” in the past.
But second – and most importantly – IT WAS ON LIVE TELEVISION.
Al Jazeera news happened to have a live stream of Gaza up when it happened.
Here it is (via the Daily Mail) :
It’s via the Daily Mail because – shock of shocks – Al Jazeera has made it difficult to find on their own site and is still pushing the “Israel” did it claim. In fact, they claim to have cross-referenced and taken apart their own video to prove that what they broadcast and what people saw with their own eyes was false.
That live video is why there can be no rush to judgement fog of war excuse – for whatever reason – too many to list, but juveniles who still think they’re at college protests running newsrooms leaps to mind as one – the media actively decided to trust Hamas and has been very slowly, very obliquely backpedaling since.
And the false coverage made things worse.
Unforgivable.