The coverage for the Gaza Hospital is noted in the note
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The news coverage was said to help inspire furious protests across the Middle East that scuttled some of President Biden’s efforts at easing tensions through diplomacy. The government of Israel accused the TV station of being a “blood libel” by linking ancient accusations of Jews as killers. That came after the BBC’s John Donnison told viewers just hours after the incident, “The Israeli military has been contacted for comment and they say they are investigating. Given the size of the explosion, you can’t really tell what else this could be, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.
A week ago, US intelligence agencies said that they were working to corroborate an Israeli assessment that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian rocket.
As more information became available, The Times reported the disputed claims of responsibility and noted that the death toll might be higher than had been reported. The headline and other text at the top of the website reflected the scope of the explosion and the dispute over responsibility within two hours.
Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified. Newsroom leaders continue to examine procedures around the biggest breaking news events — including for the use of the largest headlines in the digital report — to determine what additional safeguards may be warranted.
The audiences’ perception of fairness in the media affects how much trust they have in the media. Speed may matter a lot to readers, viewers and listeners. When stakes are so high, accuracy and fairness are more important.
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By contrast, the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights put out a call on the day of the blast for the protection of civilian life and for the incident to be the subject of an independent investigation. It notably did not project blame.
Last week, The Washington FreeBeacon’s Drew Holden documented a series of prominent news outlets and public figures organizations that appeared to rely on Hamas’ claims as authoritative, with little or scant acknowledgment of how little had been verified before publication.
The Israeli military suspected that an Israeli soldier had likely fired a lethal shot, but they didn’t tell the shooter’s name. A government spokesperson’s expression of sorrow for her death, a year later, was deemed insufficient by Abu Akleh’s family. (An FBI investigation, opened last year, has not been resolved.)
The Times’ journalists have come under scrutiny in recent days. An Israeli diplomat chastised the paper for employing Soliman Hijjy as a freelance videographer in Gaza to document the conflict. Over the past 11 years, Hijjy has praised Hitler or referred to him in social media postings. When the issue of problematic postings was brought to the attention of the Times, they took actions to ensure that he understood and could adhere to their standards.
Unlike in some other war zones, such as in Ukraine, it’s nearly impossible for outside reporters to get into Gaza, even from Israel. Most news outlets are either covering it remotely or relying on local journalists whose families are themselves at risk from Israeli strikes.
Most of the information about events in Gaza comes from Hamas. Last week, for example, a Hamas spokesman denied in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep that militants from the group had slaughtered hundreds of civilians at a music concert in the Israeli desert, despite accounts by survivors, Israeli officials and journalists for major news outlets. Inskeep noted that the attackers were responsible for the deaths of civilians.
Hamas is more than that. The United States and the European Union have determined that it is a terrorist organization. It killed more than 1,400 people and took more than 200 people hostage, which is the most deadly attack in Israeli history.
Source: News outlets backtrack on Gaza blast after relying on Hamas as key source
A Palestinian hospital evacuated after the attack on a Christian-run facility in southern Iraq: An assessment of the enigmatic video released Tuesday by militants
The BBC later issued a statement citing the full breadth of its coverage but saying that the degree of speculation in his report was, in retrospect, wrong.
The stakes are not higher. The sources can be unreliable. Sometimes concrete facts are not presented in a clear way. And yet readers reward publications that push out information instantaneously.
An assistant professor of political science at a university states that he doesn’t think that the question will ever be fully solved using open source intelligence.
Hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering in the courtyard of Al Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday, believing the Christian-run facility would be a safe haven.
The footage of the event is independent, but it appears that the militants began launching rockets from a site west of the hospital.
Many experts, including Gannon, agree that the visual evidence doesn’t support a standard Israeli airstrike. Those strikes typically leave large craters, damage structures and spread shrapnel over a large area. Hamas said they have not found physical evidence at the site, which investigators say would normally be there.
There’s a sound in the video that is close to the blast. That sound can be heard in the rise and fall in pitch as something moves away from an observer.
Earshot, a non governmental organization, analyzed the sound. Earshot found that it was most likely from the east.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is the director of Earshot and he says that this is decreasing the chance of this coming from the west. “It’s rocket science after all, so we can’t rule it out.”
Others say that the publicly available evidence, as it stands, is unlikely to give a a definitive answer. The video may not be enough because the incident happened at night in a war zone, according to a former war crimes investigator.
“I’m sure that people are worried about this,” he says. “It was a horrible thing, but man — there’s been a lot of people killed since that incident, right?”
He wants the U.N. to conduct a war crimes investigation in order to determine who was behind the explosion. He says that other issues are in need of public attention. Hospitals are out of fuel and U.N. facilities are being hit.
The declassified assessment did not provide any information about where the rocket was launched or where the blast took place.
But the senior official said the agencies were continuing to investigate. If the United States gets additional information that would point in a different direction, the official said, intelligence agencies will release it.
The Gazan rocket attack on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital: U.S. intelligence and Israel’s assessment, and no Israeli weapon
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain said his country’s intelligence services assessed that a Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza and aimed at Israel was likely the cause of the deaths at the hospital.
Last week officials estimated between 100 and 300 people were killed, but said the death toll was probably at the low end. On Tuesday, United States officials said they only had low confidence in that assessment. The death toll in Gaza was cut in half, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
U.S. officials said on Tuesday that an accurate count of the people who died at the hospital was impossible to obtain because of a lack of independent sources.
The fireball at the hospital site, and pictures taken after the cars were burned in the parking lot are consistent with a malfunctioning missile, according to U.S. officials.
U.S. officials said only light damage was sustained at the site, which is consistent with the premise of a Gaza-made rocket that broke up in flight, rather than an Israeli munition striking the hospital.
The officials said, however, that numerous mysteries still remained about the incident. Those include how many people were killed or injured when, by the U.S. account, the warhead of a Palestinian rocket landed in the parking lot of the hospital. But they said there was little damage to the hospital itself, and no collapse of the structure.
American intelligence officials said Tuesday that they now had high confidence that a Palestinian rocket was responsible for the explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza last week, and that no Israeli weapon was involved.
US intelligence agencies said they have “high confidence” that a Palestinian rocket was responsible for the explosion at Gaza’s Al-Ahli Arab Hospital last week. They added that they have no Israeli weapon involved. The US officials said that an accurate count of the people who died at the hospital was impossible to obtain because of a lack of independent sources.