How many Israelis have had to flee Islamic Jihad rocket fire this weekend? It's an easy question with a simple answer, and yet media giants the Associated Press and Reuters reduced one million fleeing Israelis to "tens of thousands," while The New York Times cited just "thousands."
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Following communication from CAMERA's Israel office today, both Reuters and AP commendably corrected their reports. As of this writing, the Times has yet to correct.
Initially, Reuters' story grossly underreported that Islamic Jihad "rocket salvoes have sent tens of thousands Israelis to shelters."
In fact, Islamic Jihad rockets have sent more than one million Israelis running to shelters, at locations including Ashkelon (population 140,000), Ashdod (226,000), Rishon LeZion (260,000), Holon (194,300), Bat Yam (130,000) and Sderot (28,000), in addition to the countless smaller yishuvim and kibbutzim. Among other targets were Tel Aviv (461,000), Mevaseret Zion (25,000), Abu Ghosh (8,000) and Har Adar (5,000).
(This writer was on her way to Shabbat lunch yesterday when a siren went off, forcing her to run to a neighbor's home and crowd into their family's protected room to wait out the Iron Dome interception. She lives in the central city of Modi'in, 67 kilometers away from Gaza. In that alone, she was one of 100,000 residents compelled to flee to safety.)
Notably, this was not the first time that Reuters made this identical error. During a 2019 round of violence very similar to this week's, it corrected after similarly misreporting that rockets were "sending thousands of people to shelters."
In response to communication from CAMERA about the recent error, Reuters amended the text to more accurately report that "rocket salvoes have paralyzed much of southern Israel and sent residents in cities like Tel Aviv and Ashkelon to shelters."
Yet, contrary to common journalistic practice, including Reuters' own, the news agency did not append a clarification alerting readers to the change. In addition, it's notable that both this time around and in 2019, the corrections avoid stating the actual correct figure – one million fleeing Israelis – although the original number had indeed included a specific (and wrong) figure of tens of thousands.
As for the Associated Press, it originally reported: "Islamic Jihad fired over 200 rockets and projectiles at Israeli cities and towns in the south and center, disrupting life for tens of thousands of people."
In response to CAMERA's follow up, AP commendably amended the text, citing rockets "disrupting life for hundreds of thousands of people." Its correction, like Reuters', was also stealthy, with no appended note alerting readers to the change.
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The Times of Israel, which also published the AP story, commendably fixed its copy even before AP did. Its corrected copy accurately refers to rockets "disrupting life for well over a million Israelis."
Meanwhile, The New York Times further minimized the threat to Israel's population, erroneously reporting: "One airstrike on Friday killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander in Gaza, and prompted the group to return fire with several rocket and mortar barrages that sent thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters overnight Friday."
By Friday night, the residents of Bat Yam, Holon, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Rishon LeЯion and Sderot, plus all of the small communities in the Gaza vicinity area, had already visited their bomb shelters.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
