As we wrote in a post last week, a Guardian article by their Beirut correspondent William Christou (“US imposes sanctions on Palestinians for requesting war crimes inquiry“, 5 Sept) included the following erroneous claim: In an interim judgment in January 2024, the ICJ ruled that the claim of genocide was “plausible”… As we’ve noted in communications […]
The concept of proportionality – or as it is more often presented, ‘disproportionality’ – has long been a theme that is widely used in BBC reporting on armed conflicts involving Israel. However, contrary to the narrative frequently advanced by the BBC, that concept does not relate to the relative numbers of people killed on either […]
What Happens When You Have an Unjust Law A Halfling writes – This article focusses on the way that terrorism legislation and the designation of entities as terrorist organisations can have a chilling effect upon other civil liberties. I should make it clear that because the article concentrates on the group Palestine Action does not […]
A report published on the BBC News website’s ‘England’ and ‘Bradford’ pages on September 6th purports to inform readers about a legal case. Titled “Pro-Palestine activists sentenced over protest”, that uncredited article tells BBC audiences that: [emphasis added] “A group of pro-Palestine activists who staged a seven-hour protest on the roof of an aerospace and […]
The ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy is committed when arguments are presented as true simply because an individual or group deemed to have authority supports it, rather than being backed by evidence or sound reasoning. This fallacy, our research over the years has demonstrated, is employed continually by British media outlets to defame Israel, saving their […]
Imagine the reaction if Western media outlets participated in a campaign for Hamas to release the hostages in Gaza, which included suggested talking points, that was launched and coordinated in part by a pro-Israeli organisation in the UK: Let’s call it CAMERA-UK. The outrage expressed in posts decrying the media’s subservience to the “pro-Israel lobby” […]
This is from CNN, so you know it pained them to publish a piece like this (click to read): Mahmoud Abbas, 90, was elected President of Palestine in 2005 for a four-year term, but somehow has hung on for 16 more years, having been voted an indefinite Presidency by the PLO (Hamas doesn’t recognize him […]
The NY Post report: A new documentary about the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas has been booted from the Toronto International Film Festival — because organizers insist the filmmakers need the rights from the terrorist group to use their horrific footage of the massacre. The festival claims the movie, called “The Road […]
Previously we discussed a BBC News website ‘live page’ devoted to the topic of the latest report from The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). BBC COVERAGE OF THE IPC GAZA CITY FAMINE REPORT – PART ONE Additional BBC News website reporting on that topic published on August 22nd began with the following item: “Famine […]
Three days after the announcement of the resumption of airdrops of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, the BBC News website published a filmed report showing Jeremy Bowen on one of the Jordanian flights, the synopsis to which states: “The BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen boarded a Jordanian military plane dropping humanitarian aid into Gaza. […]
On August 2nd the BBC News website published a report by Thomas Mackintosh headlined “Hamas refuses to disarm until Palestinian state established”. Readers of the current version of that report are told that: “Hamas has reaffirmed that it will not agree to disarm unless a sovereign Palestinian state is established, in response to one of […]
The NYT has filled its main e-page with article about starvation in Gaza and other anti-Israel news. Here, for example is the upper-left of today’s front e-page: And that’s pretty much what it looked like for the past couple of weeks. My issue is that I used to trust the Times, but they’ve shown […]
A fair number of countries have decided to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state (the U.N. can’t as it requires Security-Council approval, and the U.S. is on that council). This has had little effect as simple declarations like this have no force in international law (see reference to Natasha Hausdorff below). Now, however, another state […]
On July 25th the BBC promoted a report by its Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield: Readers of Schofield’s article – headlined “Pro-Palestinian convict freed by France after 41 years” and tagged “Israel and the Palestinians” and “Palestinian territories” despite the story having no direct connection to either of those topics – are told that: [emphasis added] […]
On July 14th the BBC published the findings of its internal review into the documentary ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone’ which it had de-platformed in February after one of the main child narrators was revealed to be the son of a Hamas official. A BBC Media Centre press release described the breach of […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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