Same old story as media sends mixed messages

IN OUR social media obsessed world dominated by Twitter, Facebook and internet memes, the headlines and blurbs of mainstream news stories are often all that news consumers notice.

In its intensive monitoring of British coverage of the latest wave of Arab terror attacks in Israel, UK Media Watch, a member of media watchdog Camera’s British department, has observed that the headlines are often much more biased than the actual article.

Several articles in the Independent exemplify the problem.

After two Jewish men were victims of a stabbing attack in Jerusalem last Thursday, and police subsequently killed the 16-year-old Palestinian per- petrator, the Independent’s headline was: “Israel unrest: Boy, 16, becomes seventh Palestinian killed by security forces after Jerusalem stabbing as wave of violence continues.”

After a storm of criticism, editors slightly revised the headline, but the false narrative, erroneously suggesting a wave of Israeli violence against Palestinians, remained.

The Independent’s headline on another story, about an Arab woman who tried to stab an Israeli, focused entirely on her subsequent confrontation with police.

It read “Israeli police shoot Arab woman outside bus station in Afula”, neglecting to note that she attempted to carry out a stabbing attack.

The Guardian’s headline for a story about a series of Palestinian attacks last Thursday, in which seven Israelis were injured in four separate terror incidents, was “Palestinians killed and Israelis stabbed in another day of violence”.

The headline obfuscates the fact that the Israelis who were stabbed were innocent victims of Palestinian attacks, while the Palestinians