A Big Media Fail: Images of Syrian Chemical Attack Victims Linked to Israeli Air Strike - by Simon Plosker

...Ultimately, this story demonstrated just how widespread the damage can be when a wire service gets it wrong and its media clients follow suit without bothering to take responsibility. In addition, we witnessed other media outlets that lazily chose to pair images of suffering Syrian children with headlines concerning an Israeli air strike. No wonder we received complaints from around the world.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
11 April '18..

It was a busy day for media coverage of Syria. First came the appalling chemical attack on the Syrian city of Douma allegedly carried out by President Bashar Assad’s forces followed by hand wringing by the civilized members of the international community.

Then, in what was most likely an unrelated event, Israel was widely seen to be behind an air strike on a Syrian air base which killed 14 people, including a number of Iranian military advisers.

The Syrian chemical attack and the alleged Israeli air strike became part of the same story for many media outlets. Many of the headlines ran with the most recent incident – the air strike. However, in the absence of any images from the scene, some media chose to use the highly emotive images resulting from the Syrian chemical attack.

This was the resulting Associated Press report:

Unfortunately as a wire service provider to thousands of global media outlets, the headline and accompanying image spread rapidly leaving casual readers under the false impression that Israel was responsible for killing or injuring Syrian children.

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