Yesterday, in a widely released report, the Associated Press wrote that Prime Minister Tony Blair had in a speech named the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as one of the root causes of international terrorism that had to be resolved in order to make the Western world safe. Israeli officials both in Israel and Britain, under an order by the Israeli government to offer only encouragement to Britain and to refrain from drawing parallels between the attacks in Britain and terrorism against Israelis, silently fumed.

As it turns out, however, AP, in the journalistic equivalent of a Freudian slip, fabricated the part of Blair’s speech in which he supposedly drew a connection between the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and international terrorism. AP’s official statement:

“The Associated Press erroneously reported that he spoke of easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Blair did not specifically mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.”

What a total non-apology. Not only does it offer no clue as to why AP decided to flagrantly make up part of the speech, it doesn’t even totally back out; it says instead that he did not “specifically” mention the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (which is a way of saying that he just implied it).

We all know that the AP is eternally eager to cast aspersion upon Israel and whitewash the serious issues within the PA (ever wonder why only Israeli media prominently featured the story about Abbas inviting Hamas into the PA?), but isn’t this getting a little ridiculous? It’s one thing (and not a good that at that) to selectively choose stories that make Israel look bad and the Palestinian Authority look good, but it’s another thing entirely to actively invent stories to make Israel look bad.

Who can you trust anymore?

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9 Comments

  • I never accused the New York Times of being biased or anti-Israel. Don’t put words in my mouth. I accused AP of bias. And I think it’s not difficult to see it.

    I also said that no Western source to my knowledge prominently featured the Hamas invite. Whereas practically every incursion into a refugee camp Israel initiates makes the front page or the nightly news, with a slew of editorializing, the invite of a terrorist group into the “democratic” government of the PA is at best, as it was in the case of the Times, a minor item in the international section, days after the fact.

  • I think that the days are gone when a news reporting was journalism. Only the naive still believe that reporters are objective and try to get all the important facts to us at all costs.

    In Israel, we know especially that the the big media is corrupt and not reporting anything that might harm the expulsion.

  • oh c’mon! michael gimme a break what s so special abot this news? and sarah pls dont defend nyt.
    what s a difference b/w making up the stories and shaping the reality – the goal is the same. and the fact that israel doesnt get a good press is known. i dont think nyt is exception. they might not lie cause they re not so stupid but they ll make sure to emphesize all israel actions.
    pls name me medias that are fair in portraying the situation in israel.

  • Well, I thought the fact that not only was AP caught making stuff up, but that it was making stuff up in order to hold Israel accountable for the terrorist attacks in London, was of particular interest. No?

  • yah its pretty sad when it is the AP that goes and does that
    they have many more minor and uncorrected blunders on a daily basis.
    makes us bnloggers all the more legit

  • Sorry to be pedantic, but there’s a kind of amusing error in the first sentence of the last paragraph: “We all know that the AP is eternally eager to cast *dispersion* upon Israel…”
    You meant “aspersion,” right?