Tit-for-Tat Bias

The foreign press corps in Israel went on a tit-for-tat bias spree yesterday, as they reported as fact unsubstantiated allegations--made not to them but to an Israeli newspaper--in which completely anonymous Israeli soldiers alleged tit-for-tat reprisal killings during 2002.

The New York Times, which ignores stuff that make the old "Pals" look bad (such as summarily executing "collaborators") slapped this report on page three. It did so, by the way, knowing that this story was the brainchild of an Israeli Moonbat group called "Breaking the Silence." That totally taints the whole thing--not that the Times cares.

At least the Moonbat connection is mentioned in the Times story-- but not in the piece the Reuters "news" service rewrote from the Israeli paper, Ma'ariv.

The Reuters report cites "testimony" by the soldiers, without saying that the "testimony" was just the yarns they told Breaking the Silence. The group itself was not mentioned.

But we do have this bit of helpful background: "There was no way of establishing on the basis of the Maariv report whether the 15 men killed in the reprisal raids had aided militant attacks. "

So in other words, the Reuters "news" service accepts all the anonymous allegations--but only up to a point. Reuters believes these guys when they say they killed Palestinians, but not when they say that the Palestinians they killed had murdered Israelis.

Hey, nothing special here. Just the usual, day-to-day lousy journalism that we have come to expect from the "newspaper of the skipping record" and "the reason Julius Reuter is spinning in his grave."