Fake Journalism About Israel — The New Opium For The Masses

Global News regurgitated pablum dished out by Reuters yesterday in spite of Global‘s claim to provide:

. . . deep engaging content that puts complex world issues in perspective. Our 12 local newsrooms provide up-to-the-minute community-based news, weather and information, while our national coverage features stories, analysis and deep, engaging content about issues in Canada and abroad.

I think the editors at globalnews.ca could have done a better job than repeating “deep engaging content” twice in two consecutive sentences. Unless, perhaps, they did that on purpose to make sure that the phrase remains firmly locked in our long-term memory banks. How deep and engaging can their analysis be, however, when they simply copy-paste an article from Reuters? This is what I call “fake journalism”. Here! Have a look:

Beginning of the Reuters article:

GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians on Friday in protests along Gaza’s border, Gaza health officials said. Israel said its troops had shot a group who broke through the fence with a bomb and attacked an army post.

The Palestinian deaths bring to around 200 the number of Gazans killed since the border protests began on March 30, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.

Beginning of the Global News article:

GAZA — Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians on Friday in protests along Gaza’s border, Gaza health officials said. Israel said its troops had shot a group who broke through the fence with a bomb and attacked an army post.

The Palestinian deaths bring to around 200 the number of Gazans killed since the border protests began on March 30, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.

And that is the way it is through the entire article.

There are many other news sites that copy-pasted this article as well. However, in a unique fit of creativity, The Daily Star of Lebanon added material all on their own. Can you see it here? (To make it easier for speed readers to identify, I am putting the unique content in bold and ignoring mere changes in wording):

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians Friday, four of them in a single incident, in one of the deadliest days in months of mass protests along the security fence separating Gaza and Israel, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Israel said its troops had shot and killed a group who broke through the fence with a bomb and attacked an army post.

Let us just ignore the fact that they say they are reporting from so-called occupied Jerusalem. I would expect no less from friendly Lebanon that is hosting the globally respected terror organization called Hizbollah, headed by Nasrallah who is living his life hiding in an underground bunker.

With news sites simply regurgitating content put out by agencies such as Reuters and Associated Press (AP), readers around the world are consuming news items such that, if you think about it, resembles a walk through a House of Mirrors where all the mirrors distort the true image in exactly the same way. Had these news sites followed what AP suggests is the purpose of their material, we might perhaps get different takes on information presented to us, thus giving readers a chance to come to their own conclusions (God forbid!). Here is what Associated Press announces in large font on their website:

I wonder what part of “Where stories begin” and “Build your next story” journalists and editors do not understand. If they did what AP suggests, they might actually have to work on their stories — like once-upon-a-time journalists. Instead, we get fake journalism.