National Post

Associated Press’s bias is showing

War coverage blatantly anti-israel

Since Hamas murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel nearly five months ago, the Associated Press newswire service has made the choice to amplify the perspectiv­e of the terrorist organizati­on, while painting Israel in as negative a light as possible. Its coverage of the war that was ignited by the attack frequently treats Hamas as the more reliable source, doing a disservice to readers looking for objective, fact-based journalism.

The Associated Press (AP) is immensely influentia­l, with its reporting appearing in hundreds of news outlets around the world, including in National Post, reaching, they claim, four-billion people a day, making its clear and unequivoca­l anti-israel bias a unique problem.

A particular­ly egregious example is how AP covered the story of 112 Palestinia­ns who were killed during the delivery of humanitari­an aid in Gaza City on Thursday. According to the Israel Defense Forces, most of the deaths were due to people being stampeded or run over, as they crowded aid trucks.

According to a Times of Israel report, the IDF says troops were ordered to fire warning shots, followed by shots at the legs of Palestinia­ns “who moved toward soldiers and a tank at an IDF checkpoint, endangerin­g soldiers.” Israeli forces say they killed up to 10 people as a result, but did not fire on the crowd generally.

Hamas, which has an obvious interest in Jews being perceived as bloodthirs­ty war criminals, blames all the deaths on Israel and called it a “massacre.”

The basic facts of the deadly aid run are not in dispute, specifical­ly that over 100 people died and that, at one point, Israeli soldiers opened fire. Associated Press updates throughout Thursday contained much of the same details as reporting from the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, the Wall Street Journal and the London Daily Telegraph. What was different in the AP’S telling of events was how they were framed and the headlines their stories carried.

While it seems obvious that the Israeli version of events is more plausible than the Hamas version, all AP needed to do, at a minimum, was to frame the story as one where the cause of the deaths were in dispute.

Instead, it took the Hamas version of events as the plain truth.

Here is the headline from AP’S first story at 4 a.m. ET: “Strike on Palestinia­ns Waiting for Aid in Gaza Kills and Wounds Dozens.” The only sources cited for the claim that a “strike,” implying a targeted attack, was launched against civilians, was “local hospital officials,” who didn’t even speak to AP, but to the unapologet­ically anti-israel Al Jazeera network. Even so, AP asserted, without qualificat­ion, that a “strike” against “Palestinia­ns waiting for aid” had occurred.

As more details emerged, AP provided its own reporting, but didn’t improve the framing. Here is the headline for an update at 1:21 p.m. ET: “Israeli Troops Fire on Crowd Seeking Food From Aid Convoy, Killing More Than 100 Palestinia­ns.”

The headline asserts, without attributio­n and without acknowledg­ing that the facts are contested, that Israel fired on the crowd and that it killed over 100 Gazans.

Anyone reading that headline, assuming they believed it, would be left with the impression that Israel targeted innocent civilians and fired directly on people who

were just trying to get food. Indeed, the body of the story itself didn’t do much to give readers a sense that there were competing versions of what happened.

The first line of the story, what reporters call a lead, read: “Israeli troops fired on a large crowd of Palestinia­ns racing to pull food off an aid convoy in Gaza City on Thursday, witnesses said.”

While the lead did include attributio­n — “witnesses said” — AP’S reporting was still framed as if Israel had committed an unambiguou­s war crime. The Israeli perspectiv­e was not included until the sixth paragraph, the only line in the 29-paragraph story where the Israeli point of view was presented.

This isn’t journalism. This isn’t holding Israel to account. This is Hamas propaganda, plain and simple.

Associated Press editors may point to the fact that they moderated their story eventually, changing the headline to, “Palestinia­ns Say Israeli Troops Fired at People Seeking Food. Israel Says Scene Was Deadly Stampede,” and moving the Israeli version of events higher up. But that wouldn’t explain why that update, which came more than 12 hours after AP started reporting the story, took so long, or why AP asserted the Hamas perspectiv­e as the truth to begin with.

Hours earlier, at 8:42 a.m. ET, the Times of Israel carried the headline, “Dozens of Gazans Said Killed in Stampede for Aid; IDF Opens Fire, Blamed for Deaths,” with a later headline noting, “IDF says its fire caused no more than 10 casualties.”

Dismiss the Times as having a pro-israeli bias if you want, but it acknowledg­ed that the IDF fired on civilians in the headline, and it included the Hamas perspectiv­e, blaming Israel for all the deaths in the early headline, as well as the second paragraph of the story. The Times of Israel also included witness accounts of Israeli troops firing at Palestinia­ns, just like the AP story did.

The main difference being, the Times sought to report what happened, including that the facts were in dispute, whereas the Associated Press appeared keen to present the most anti-israel version of events it could muster, without concern for even a veneer of journalist­ic standards.

Other publicatio­ns tried to offer as neutral a framing as possible. “Israeli Forces Fire on Palestinia­n Civilians Amid Aid Delivery Chaos,” read a truthful headline from the Wall Street Journal, for example.

It would be bad enough if the Associated Press was just one among many news outlets covering the Israeli-hamas war, but it’s accounts of the war are among the most widely read in the world. Hamas couldn’t ask for a better public relations team.

THIS IS HAMAS PROPAGANDA, PLAIN AND SIMPLE.