The New York Times, reporting last month on Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an abducted Israeli soldier, wanted to emphasize how the released prisoners were innocent of any real crime:
Sarah Abu Sneineh came with her family to greet her grandson Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who was arrested three years ago at age 15 for throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.
Oops:
Correction: December 21, 2011 . . .
And the article misstated Israeli charges against one of the freed prisoners, Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who had been arrested three years ago at age 15. Israel had accused him of weapons training, attempted murder and possession of explosives — not throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.
John Hinderaker explains how this sort of “mistake” happens:
It is not hard to see what happened here. The Times article is by Ethan Bronner, and it also credits two individuals whom I take to be stringers: Khaled Abu Aker in Ramallah, and Fares Akram in Gaza. Since the incident described here was in Ramallah, the information presumably came from Khaled Abu Aker, a Palestinian journalist. Further, he interviewed Sneineh’s grandmother, and it seems safe to assume that she was the source of the misinformation about the charges against her grandson. Israeli officials could have supplied the real facts, but evidently no one asked them.
This is how reporting works at the NYT, I guess. Just talk to one side — the side you like — and report what they say. Don’t let the other side spoil the narrative.
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, it was only a few days before this that the NYT was calling out the Washington Post for doing the same thing:
Don’t just repeat it. Report it.
That’s the lesson this week for MSNBC and for The Washington Post, both of which apologized for repeating a liberal blog’s claim that [blah blah blah] . . . The [Post’s] correction stated that it “should have contacted the Romney campaign for comment before publication.”
Internet Scofflaw 