Reuters’ Leaky Water Story - by Simon Plosker

...Update 2: Despite the Reuters story being debunked and failing to include any Israeli response, Haaretz has republished it on its website. Out of all the media outlets to run the story, Haaretz had the ability to follow up with Israeli sources to verify the credibility of the story. It chose not to, preferring to run with an anti-Israel piece. Disgusting but, sadly, not surprising.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
03 November '16..

The issue of water rights and claims that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are going thirsty, are repeatedly used as a stick with which to beat Israel. But these claims are also more often than not false. The latest is a story from Reuters headlined: “As water dries up, West Bank village thirsts for a less precarious supply.”

A mountainous Palestinian community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Al Jab’a differs in many ways from surrounding Israeli settlements but it shares one worry with its neighbors – a shortage of water. …

Residents of Al Jab’a, who once had to walk for hours daily to fetch water, do have limited access to Israeli water supplies in their concrete homes due to a reservoir, pipeline and a pump built in 2013 by an Italian non-governmental organization.

But the water provided is not enough, according to families in Al Jab’a, a village of about 150 houses 12 km (7 miles) southwest of Bethlehem. They also fear their system could be demolished as it was not officially approved.

The story continues with alleged restrictions on the village’s water supply:

But numerous rural and Bedouin communities in the West Bank are not connected to a network run by Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, which is responsible for supplying water to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory.

Except that Mekorot is not responsible for supplying Palestinians with water. This is the responsibility of the Palestinian Water Authority. As NGO Monitor points out, water issues are dictated by the mutually agreed 1995 Oslo II Interim Agreement:

(Continue to Full Story)

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CAMERA - International Herald Tribune Falls for AFP Fauxtography

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA Media Analysis..
28 January '12..



In the past, Reuters was the wire service most associated with "fauxtography" of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but it seems that Agence France-Presse may also be getting in the act. On Jan. 25, the AFP photo service carried an image by photographer Hazem Bader in which a Palestinian construction worker is said to be screaming in pain after he was run over by a trailer driven by an Israeli soldier. The photo appeared on page 4 of the International Herald Tribune (at least in the Israeli edition) on Thursday (Jan. 26). The image and captions (both AFP and IHT follow).

The original AFP caption reads:

An injured Palestinian construction worker screams in pain after an Israeli army driver drove a trailer hooked to a tractor over his legs, as he tried to block him when Israeli forces stopped workers on January 25, 2012 from building a house in al-Dirat village, south of Yatta in the southern Bank town Hebron region. The Israeli forces were seizing the equipment and trailer from the construction workers as the site falls in the occupied zone C in which Israel prevents Palestinians from building on their land.

Similarly, the IHT caption states:

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. Israeli forces were seizing the trailer from construction workers because the site was in a zone where Israel prohibits Palestinians from building on their land.

Yet, after checking with both Palestinian and Israeli sources, it seems that the man was not at all injured, and there is no evidence that he was run over.

Reuters Reports False Claims, But Ignores Flotilla Facts

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
30 July '10

Aug. 1 Update: Reuters continues to stand by their biased and misleading language. A senior editor responsible for standards indicated that the media giant would not be amending their wording since, he insists, what happened on the Mavi Marmara is a matter of "considerable controversy." Yet aside from possible denials by some extreme activists, there is no controversy whatsoever on the question of whether the Israeli soldiers were attacked when they landed on the ship, especially in light of the video footage of the incident.


July 30 – The role of a news organization is to uncover and report the facts, not to hide them once they have already come to light. Yet Reuters inexcusably does the latter in its July 30 report, "U.N. rights body tells Israel to end Gaza blockade." The article tells readers that the attack by activists on Israeli troops boarding the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara is nothing more than an Israeli claim denied by activists, in effect suggesting that Israeli soldiers might not have actually been attacked on the ship.

"Israel admitted errors in planning the raid but justified the use of lethal force saying its marines came under attack from activists wielding knives and clubs. Activists deny this," the report notes. (Emphasis added.)

This language, which casts the attack as an unsettled matter of dispute, is highly misleading, as it fails to inform readers that the Israeli troops were indeed, unequivocally and clearly, attacked, a fact corroborated by video evidence. In other words, activists who deny that Israeli soldiers were attacked are lying, and demonstrably so.

In an April 2009 blog post, media critic Jay Rosen, of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, faulted what he called "he said, she said" journalism. In such journalism, he explained, "no real attempt is made to assess clashing truth claims" in a story, even though "the means for assessment do exist, so it’s possible to exert a factual check on some of the claims."

This is precisely what Reuters does in its July 30 story.

(Read full analysis)

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