Talk about burying the lede! Below is a screen cap of CNN’s breaking report on Tuesday’s terrorist attack on the Kehilat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem, which left five Jewish worshipers dead, three of them Americans.
The headline, which is plainly visible, reads, unbelievably, “Israeli gov’t radio: Police shot, killed 2 Palestinians”:
Arutz Sheva (via Weasel Zippers) notes that headline was the handiwork of CNN’s Ben Wedeman. “Yossi Dagan, the head of media relations for the Samaria Regional Council, filed a formal complaint Tuesday with the Government Press Office (GPO),” asking that Wedeman’s press pass be revoked.
Dagan charged that the headline was a serious violation of international journalism ethics…
“There is no reality elsewhere in the world where journalists can report a terror attack in this style,” he stated. “This rule should also apply to foreign reporters in Israel. There is good and there is bad, there are killers and there are victims.”
“The media arena in recent years has become an equally important battlefield for Israel, and it must use all the tools at its disposal to demand certain baselines in its media coverage,” he continued. “Coverage like this legitimizes the next murder; whoever loses in this loses the next war as well.”
[…]
CNN’s strange headline is a direct continuation of a series of other reports in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that appeared recently,” the letter said, and noted for example that the report on the car rampage near the Jerusalem light rail last month by the Associated Press began with the title “Israeli police shot a man in East Jerusalem.”
