The Washington Post last night retracted its story misrepresenting an incident in Gaza. The Post, like most of the news media, falsely claimed that Israel killed 30 Gazan civilians who were just trying to get some food (you know, the “Aww, poor Palestinians, still being persecuted by those evil Jews!” narrative).
The Post’s statement was posted on X rather than on its website, and announced that the paper had “deleted the post below because it and early versions of the article didn’t meet Post fairness standards.” That’s another lie, as it is pure deceit. The story had to be deleted because it was false and should not have been published in the first place. Yes, false news stories are unfair, but that’s a secondary problem.
Palestinian Arab sources had spread the claim that an Israeli strike near a humanitarian aid distribution center resulted in at least 30 deaths and numerous injuries. The international media outlets didn’t consider the source, and leaped to the conclusion that Israel was committing war crimes.
Later that same day, the IDF released the findings of its initial investigation into the incident. These findings indicated that the IDF did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site, and that the reports being circulated as fact by media outlets were false. Yet even after the story had been discredited, CNN and MSNBC (among others) continued to stick with the original. anti-Israel spin. I saw this in real time: a Fox News guest told viewers that the report had been debunked, and at exactly the same time, the two Axis networks were repeating the original account.
The IDF again called on the media to be cautious with information published by the Hamas terrorist organization. Gee, ya think? But they aren’t careful and don’t want to be careful. They want to back the Democratic Party’s position that Israel is the villain for reacting to an unprovoked terrorist attack exactly as the United Sates would (and has): by crushing the attacker and ensuring that the actions could never be repeated.
Saying “Oopsie! Never mind!” does not undo the damage caused by the original false reporting. That the Post and other media outlets would accept without confirmation a Hamas narrative shows where their confirmation bias lies, and why they are no longer trustworthy.
Ethics Alarms 
“The IDF again called on the media to be cautious with information published by the Hamas terrorist organization. Gee, ya think? But they aren’t careful and don’t want to be careful.”
With the caveat in advance that what I’m about to say does not absolve the piss poor reporting that the legacy media generally does surrounding this conflict…. I have a certain amount of sympathy for them in that it would be harder to imagine a more disparate disparity in information power.
I mean, on one side you have the IDF and on the other you have Hamas. And while these organizations aren’t equal, they are both belligerents in an ongoing military conflict. We’ve caught the IDF lying or covering up material facts before, but we still generally trust their reporting because the IDF has proven themselves to be more trustworthy than Hamas. But they aren’t unbiased, no one would really expect them to be, and it’s not like the Palestinians never have a point.
So I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do. I don’t know who we’re supposed to listen to for a countervailing narrative if not Hamas. Hamas was, and is, like it or not, for at least a little while longer, Gaza’s government. Any organization that might provide a counternarrative from a Gazan perspective probably has government ties, which means being tied to Hamas. While we obviously need to be careful with information coming from Gaza, I don’t think we can just reject it all out of hand.
This is something about which I agree with you. No belligerent in a conflict is 100% pure.
The Red Army was notorious for raping civilians in even liberated countries and concentration camps so the reputation is rightly theirs; but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t rapists among the western Allies. There is a part in the memoir “A Woman in Berlin” in which the writer/narrator quotes a German neighbor who tries to be philosophical about the attack by saying, “Maybe our boys did the same thing”. And their boys did.
So I’m willing to allow that the IDF has had its share of mishaps that they’d prefer no one knows. With footage possible from mere cell phones to prove or disprove official narratives, any side in a conflict should be careful about embellishing too much.
After all, Germans during WWII who secretly listened to the BBC for more accurate information sometimes found themselves disappointed when the British government claimed that such and such a building had been destroyed during the recent air raid on such and such a city and anyone could see the building was still standing.
British propaganda may have turned off Germans hoping that they would get the truth from the BBC, just as the IDF being caught covering up its mistakes can affect public opinion about Israel.
At least in the USA under the Trump administration we can still question virtually all narratives. Not so much in the UK and majority Muslim countries. This freedom of expression would be in serious jeopardy had the vapid cackler been elected. For this and a myriad of other reasons we can be thankful for Trump who doesn’t hate the USA like the woke Left does. Just saying…🤠
Saying “Oopsie! Never mind!” does not undo the damage caused by the original false reporting. That the Post and other media outlets would accept without confirmation a Hamas narrative shows where their confirmation bias lies, and why they are no longer trustworthy.
But this is exactly the point, Jack, and the reason why they went so fast without bothering to validate the story — they wanted the damage done, and don’t mind at all that they look foolish to people with more than two brain cells to rub together. But the “low information” consumer of news will never pay attention to the correction, and they know that.
The media, particularly what is referred to in the political lexicon as the “leftmedia,” has no interest at all in the truth unless it promotes their narrative. They are perfectly okay with reporting fake news then “retracting” it (as if it were possible to retract something on the Internet). It is now a tried and true formula for advancing their preferred narrative and helping people think the “right” way about the object of their reporting. “Oopsies” are just performative; there is no investigation of how they could’ve gotten it wrong, or autopsy to prevent recurrence. They know they are going to get it wrong again, and are proud to do so if the story promotes “rightthink.”
That’s why we can’t trust them — because they aren’t trustworthy and aren’t even news organizations. They are pure propagandists, and proud of that fact.
Whatever happened to the good old days when the academic, merdia, and entertainment elites were pro-American?
During World War II, there were cartoons plainly promoting the Allies.