Sternthal - Are journalistic ethics dead?

Herald Tribune changed
original AFP caption

Tamar Sternthal..
Israel Opinion/Ynet
06 February '12..

In recent days, two dramatic photographs alleged to be depicting Israeli army brutality have gone viral. One, which circulated on Facebook, purportedly showed an Israeli soldier stepping on a Palestinian girl and pointing an AK-47 at her head. It was exposed as Bahraini anti-Israel street theater.

The second, by Agence-France Presse photographer Hazem Bader, was not confined only to the free-for-all Internet. Although it too is of dubious authenticity, it appeared in mainstream news outlets which claim to uphold journalistic codes of conduct.

The International Herald Tribune published by the New York Times, attached great importance to the image, prominently displaying it Jan. 26 across four columns with the caption: “A Palestinian construction worker screamed in pain Wednesday after he tried to block an Israeli Army driver who drove a trailer over his legs near Hebron. . . .” The original AFP caption referred to an “injured Palestinian construction worker.”

The Washington Post ran the color image across five columns, and several news websites featured Bader’s photo, including the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian and MSNBC.

After checking Palestinian, international and Israeli sources, it seems that the “injured worker,” Mahmoud Abu Qbeita, was, in fact, not actually injured. Moreover, there is no evidence that he was even run over. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, both of which provide comprehensive reports about all West Bank injuries, made no mention of the alleged injury.

Fresnozionism - Who really burned the mosque?

Delegation of left-wing
Israelis visits damaged Tuba
Zangaria mosque to 'make
amends'. But what if
it was torched by Arabs?

Fresnozionism.org
30 December '11



I have written about how the so-called ‘price tag’ actions have been a goldmine for anti-Israel propaganda. Although there seem to have been a few cases where vandals were actually caught, in others it seems as though the police have simply “rounded up the usual [right-wing activist] suspects.” After a burst of publicity about how they are doing their job, they are forced to release them for lack of actual evidence.

We know that the manufacturing of Israeli ‘crimes’ is a cottage industry for Palestinians. There was the notorious case of Mohammed Dura, the ‘Jenin massacre‘ in which nobody was massacred, the Gaza Beach incident (where navy ships allegedly fired on Palestinian picnickers), and countless incidents alleged to have occurred during Operation Cast Lead which found their way into the Goldstone Report. Hizballah also faked numerous ‘war crimes’, such as the rocketing of a Red Cross ambulance, etc.

So I think I can be excused for wondering how many of the ‘price tag’ actions were actually carried out by Jewish right-wing vandals and how many were ‘Paliwood’ productions. When a mosque was burned in the Arab village of Tuba Zangaria, I wrote this: