Friday, June 04, 2010

AN HONEST MAN

In an article in today's Australian (Military media team too slow with truth), Abraham Rabinovich retells a story of an honest journalist who admits to being deceived by initial "eyewitness" reports of brutality of Israeli troops when they intercepted the Gaza flotilla:

In an article in the Jerusalem Post yesterday, editor David Horovitz writes that a foreign correspondent told him that only after he saw the video did he realise he had misrepresented the situation in the story he filed earlier in the day. "I realised I had done Israel an injustice."

Surprising confirmation of the Israeli claim that the ambush had been prepared by an organised group of militants was furnished by a video camera on the deck of the ship, which the navy appropriated. It shows a group of brawny men wielding metal staves, which they had cut from the ship's railings with small hand-held saws. One man holds a broken bottle. As a commando Zodiac comes alongside, another camera shows the militants throwing stun grenades into the craft."

Unfortunately, not all journalists are prepared to believe their own eyes preferring to give credit to obvious lies of witnesses who are hardly impartial and barely credible. Then again, not all journos are particularly honest these days.

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