You’re using Tlaib and Omar to advance your argument.
That’s hilarious!
This conversation has become deeply unserious, and I hope that it can move back toward something–anything–more substantive.
Tlaib and Omar are both generally intelligent people who have fallen for Hamas propaganda because the mainstream media parroted said Hamas propaganda with only a quick “according to Palestinian officials” to wash their hands of it, yes.
That doesn’t mean they’d be staunch supporters of Israel otherwise, but at least they wouldn’t be accusing Israel of the mass slaughter of 500 civilians at a hospital.
It’s hard to reply to your posts because you are constantly rewriting them, often contradicting what you previously wrote.
So according to people in this thread, the following headline shows that nbc spread misinformation?
And to be clear I think the hospital bombing was as now reported a failed rocket from Palestinian terrorists, but it’s bizarre to me the level of cynicism over a standard journalistic practice.
Moderating:
This is getting to personal for MPSIMS. Dial it back.
And everyone: the story about whether Israel has real recordings of Islamic Jihad taking credit for bombing the hospital has been beaten to death. If actual new evidence emerges, it would be okay to reopen the issue. But drop it for now.
I’ve temporarily closed the thread to give everyone time to read this mod note, and then I’ll reopen it.
FWIW, when I first saw headlines along the lines of “Israel strikes hospital,” I believed them (but immediately thought the hospital must have been harboring a Hamas stronghold of some sort).
It did not occur to me that the incident might not even be an Israeli missile strike until reports to the contrary began to surface hours later.
I’m neither a journalist nor a politician, and my credulity is certainly open to debate. This is merely an anecdote reflecting the impact such premature headlines can have.
To me it was believable that Israel would strike a hospital (if, as you said, Hamas was actively operating out of it); what was not believable is that Israel would strike a hospital that was so full of civilians that 500 would die. Israel wouldn’t risk a strike like that. Knowing Hamas’ behavior from past conflicts, that immediately made me doubt it was an Israeli strike at all. But it’s true that the casualties could have been the exaggerated part.
If you’re looking for an analogy, try this. If an NBC had posted a headline that sounds like highly significant news, say:
Trump at risk of fatal stroke - Washington hospital
…and it turned out that Trump is not in the hospital for treatment, that the source was a Democrat-voting doctor working at a Washington hospital who was referring to general health statistics for people of Trump’s age and weight and eating habits - then that would be misinformation.
I’m not a journalist, but I have read the news for many years and disagree with your analysis.
I think a news outlet would only write something like what you have have suggested if they had a reasonable level of confidence that what was being said was true. If they had full confidence, they would not mention the third party in the headline, and if they had a lower level of confidence, they would use quotation marks to convey that they were merely relaying what a third party had said.
In your example, you state that the basis for the headline is a single “Democrat-voting doctor working at a Washington hospital”. I would therefore consider it implausible that a reputable news organisation would frame the headline in any other way than through the use of quotation marks, because, in your scenario, they have no additional information to support what is being claimed.
It is true that in the 24 hours after the strike on the Gazan hospital the evidence was leading to it being an Israeli air strike.
Consider the evidence:
- Israel is undertaking a massive bombing campaign in Gaza, destroying thousands of buildings
- Hamas has been known to store weapons in hospitals, so the hospital could potentially have been seen by Israel as a legitimate target
- the Palestinian side said it was an Israeli airstrike
- the hospital had already been hit by Israeli fire, possibly multiple times:
The preponderance of the evidence was leading towards it being an Israeli airstrike.
I would like to remind readers of the comment that started this particular discussion:
The comments in this post are patently untrue and dishonest. Every cite posted in this thread from a reputable Western news organisation says clearly in the headline of the article that the claim that it was an Israeli airstrike was coming from some Palestinian authority.
If these early headlines were not recklessly unverified and misleading, how do you explain the subsequent widespread anti-Israel protests around the world? And not just in places like Iran and Lebanon that are exposed more to local propaganda, but in Western cities too.
When news is so inflammatory, it behooves any reputable news outlet to have better sources than completely unverified Hamas propaganda.
ETA: Feel free to have the last word, but I’m not going to respond further to this distraction.
I expect the people who went to protest specifically about the hospital explosion in Western cities would be much more likely to get their news through social media rather than traditional and established news outlets, which use journalists.
2018 Pew survey
Social media is not regulated. Anyone can spread news. Many on social media explicitly stated that the hospital explosion was an Israeli airstrike. Hell, I’ve even read people say Israel has used tactical nuclear weapons in Gaza, which obviously is not true.
I agree with this. The issue is with the media treating “random bullshit Hamas said” as “statements with reasonable confidence of truth”.
If the Kremlin, or an ISIS spokesperson, or Kim Jung Un’s babysitter claimed that Ukraine or the US or South Korea hit a hospital in Russian/Syrian/North Korea killing 500 people I’d expect the media to treat that with skepticism.
We will see if they’ve learned better next time Hamas lies out their ass.
Social media posts typically do not make up bullshit “news” out of whole cloth.
They usually start (and spread) based on a stupid headline, or based on an actual news journalist jumping the gun in order to get a scoop on a story.
These social media posts are merely repeating (and amplifying and distorting) actual news sites or more likely, click-bait headlines from actual news sites.
Correct, but what they saw on social media were headlines from reputable news organizations screaming ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE ON HOSPITAL KILLS 500 PEOPLE according to Hamas Palestinian Officials
Right. Sort of like the two social media posts from elected representatives that I quoted which had been posted in response to people sharing articles with misleading titles.
Are you serious?
Have you ever used social media, like Twitter or Facebook?
Where do you think things like QAnon stories originate from?
You mean “actual news sites” like the Epoch Times? 
This info is coming from the same Ministry of Health that made the claims about the hospital being hit by an Israeli airstrike with 500 dead, yes?
That’s why I wrote “possibly multiple times”. You would accept that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the principal leader of the Church of England, would count as the cite for one instance, or would you dispute that? Then there’s the Undersecretary of the Gaza Ministry of Health that would count as a cite for a possible second instance.