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News Outlets Bomb With Deeply Flawed Coverage of Hospital Disaster in Gaza

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Oct 18, 2023
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

10.18.2023

Pre-Written Field Reports – VARIOUS OUTLETS

  • Possibly the worst coverage was seen in a war effort already filled with horrid journalism.

Last night, the story was all the rage. A hospital in Gaza was "reportedly" struck by an Israeli air-fired rocket that took the lives of 500 people. The outrage was instantaneous, protests welled up across the Middle East, and news outlets repeated the headlines all across the media spectrum.

And then, finally, the facts arrived.

It turns out that it was not an Israeli bomb targeting the hospital but a rocket launched from Gaza malfunctioning in flight and hitting the parking lot of the facility. The hospital remains intact, save for windows that were blown out. The actual amount of casualties is, of course, not readily known, but given the lack of structural targeting, it is safe to believe that it will be only a fraction of the hundreds initially claimed.

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Numerous American news outlets blasted headlines with the initial claim that Israel hit this hospital, and it was a deeply disturbing display to see this mad rush with banner headlines over deeply inaccurate information. The abandonment of basic journalism is staggering. Instead of verifying details and compiling facts, they ran with claimed innuendo. The once-standard practice of getting a minimum of two sources was chucked to repeat the claims from a terrorist organization. What followed throughout the night and this morning were adjusted news reports, rampant corrections, and reconstituted headlines. 

Immediately on the heels of these errant reports, protests broke out in the region, and a planned meeting with Joe Biden and the leaders of Jordan was abruptly canceled. This was media malpractice of the lowest order, and it was seen across the journalism complex.

Reporting on the Mirror – CNN

  • See, it's not their fault because of all of the inaccuracies that were being reported…by…them.

This gaudy display of media malpractice would be just the kind of thing that a media correspondent would be all over, such as Oliver Darcy of CNN. Yet, not surprisingly, Darcy looked over all of the horribly flawed news reports about this hospital explosion, and instead of harsh criticism of the behavior, he made excuses for it:

A series of high-stakes claims emerged Tuesday amid the roiling Israel-Hamas war, presenting one of the thorniest challenges yet to newsrooms trying to make sense of the chaos and provide clarity to the world as it watches the deadly conflict unfold. In the heat of a battle, and in the rush to quickly get information out to the public during rapidly developing situations, mistakes can be made. The first draft of history is not always perfect. The fog of war is very real.

Yes, it IS real – but you cannot explain away the errors made on this story when the news outlets were the ones generating that fog. Darcy exclaims that on a news story such as this, "the stakes could not be higher," but that means that based on the disturbing results we have seen, the failures could not have been lower.

Body Checking the Fact-Checkers – NBC NEWS

  • Just more evidence that his promised self-imposed exile from journalism is a good idea.

Ben Collins was also involved in disseminating the false claims of an Israeli attack being responsible for the hospital explosion that wasn't. What is most stark about his rushing headlong into the fog was that even when someone advised him to move forward with caution until the facts were known, Collins boldly kept at it, looking all the more foolish now as a result.

In looking over his willingness to push out the Hamas talking points now proven wrong, Ben was the recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award for "Incisive reporting from the trenches of the information war." In accepting his paradox of an award, Collins said in his speech, "People with money and power are actively trying to kill the truth."

Pre-Written Field Reports – ABC NEWS

  • On the battlefield but being taken to school.

It has been a good week so far in witnessing journalists becoming ensnared by their very own gotcha journalism directed at supposed targets. Yesterday, we gave you the Canadian politician tying a reporter in knots by refusing to accept loaded questions. Now, we have a smug ABC News reporter challenging an IDF soldier about the plight of Palestinians in the face of a looming ground assault by Israel into Gaza.

The soldier was having none of it and threw the reporter's question right back at him, reminding the journalist that they were not starting a conflict; they had been pulled into it by the very actions this reporter was attempting to condemn. 

Pathological Media Amnesia – MSNBC

  • Completely unaware of just how accurate his statement was as he complained.

It never fails to amuse when a journalist lodges a complaint about the very thing they had previously been warned about but had scorned those issuing a warning.

Mehdi Hasan looked at the news report of a major law firm rescinding its job offer to grad students after they protested in favor of violence against Israeli citizens. (Who knew there were actually a few Jewish lawyers?!)

Hasan thought he had a dig on those from the right when he brought up prior complaints about cancel culture. What he missed in his attempt to "own the Cons" is that those were people warning for a long time that people would be unhappy when their rules began to be applied to them – and now just look at how unhappy Hasan is with this development.

News Avoidance Syndrome – AXIOS

Axios reporter Russell Contreras looked at the border crisis and concluded that the claim of us having an "open border" is simply a myth. Well, we cannot really say that; Contreras did not really look into the matter so much as he chose to look away.

His claims were based on the past decades of seeing an increase in border agents, the addition of surveillance equipment, and longer lines seen at ports of entry. It does not seem to occur to Russell that these increases were due to the commensurate surge in people arriving at and through our borders.

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin has spent years at the border, and he lit up Contreras for his laughable conclusions. 

"Riffed from the Headlines" is Townhall's daily VIP feature with coverage on the deeply flawed aspects of journalism in the nation, where Brad Slager looks to bring accountability to the mishaps, malaprops, misdeeds, manipulations, malpractice, and manufactured narratives in mainstream media.