Ma’ariv Cites CAMERA, BBC Watch

The Israel daily Ma’ariv cited CAMERA and BBC Watch, an independent project of CAMERA, in an article Friday (Nov. 23) about Hamas propaganda. Relevant excerpts of the article, by Sarah Leibovitz-Dar, follow (CAMERA’s translation). Referring to the case of four-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah, whose death was falsely blamed on Israel, Dar writes:

CAMERA, an American organization which monitors inaccuracies in American media coverage of the Middle East, quickly sent complaints to the American media outlets which alleged that Sadallah was a victim of an Israeli strike. The organization reports on its Web site that after contacting editors, the Reuters news agency refiled the item which stated that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which documents the names of victims killed in Israeli attacks, does not list Sadallah. CNN reporters who spoke with Sadallah’s relatives speculated whether an errant Palestinian rocket killed him, and even reported that CNN’s crew in Gaza says it saw two such rockets passing overhead, apparently fired not far from where the boy lived.

Leibovitz-Dar wrote about BBC Watch’s work on BBC reporter Jon Donnison who tweeted a photograph of a Syrian victim whom he said was a Palestinian in Gaza:

Decades after World War II, the BCC also does not always tell the truth. Several days ago, BBC reporter Jon Donnison posted to his Twitter account a photograph of a girl injured in the fighting in Syria and wrote that the girl was injured in Operation Pillar of Defense. “Heartbreaking, pain in Gaza,” Donnison wrote. Later he apologized for the mistake and said the photograph was from another journalist. BBC Watch, which monitors BBC coverage, refused to accept the apology. Donnison’s “decision to promote deliberate misinformation – either knowingly or as a result of a complete failure to check facts – indicates that he is not merely naïve,” BBC Watch wrote on its site. The organization even found that the picture was taken from the Twitter account of Hazem Balousha, a Palestinian journalist and social activist.

Leibovitz-Dar also wrote about CAMERA’s catch of an inaccurate Yahoo! News headline:

CAMERA found that the Yahoo! News Internet site was also inaccurate. A photograph of two Israeli children running for shelter last Thursday in Nitzan appeared under the headline “Gaza’s children caught in crossfire.” CAMERA contacted Yahoo! News requesting a correction. “Perhaps it’s too much to ask for Yahoo! News to understand that, unlike Palestinian children suffering in Gaza, the Israeli children are not ‘caught in the crossfire’ but are intentionally targeted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets,” CAMERA wrote on its site.

The Yahoo! headline has since been corrected.