Bad Reporting

The NYTimes, instead of relying on an agency report, as usual, decided to deal with this:

West Bank: Palestinian Family’s Home Is Set on Fire
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: November 14, 2013

Assailants burned the entrance of a Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Sinjil early Thursday. Hebrew graffiti sprayed on a stone wall outside suggested that the arson was an act of revenge by Jewish extremists for the fatal stabbing of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian teenager the day before. The graffiti read “Regards from Eden, revenge!” apparently a reference to Eden Atias, the soldier who was stabbed on a bus in northern Israel. The house, belonging to the Dar Khalil family, which has no known connection with the stabbing, was set on fire as the parents and five children slept inside. They escaped without serious injury. The Israeli police said an investigation was underway.

Since Sinjil is nearby to Shiloh, I was more concerned over this incident than other presumed 'price-tag' activities.

One media item was reported by EOZ

...one photo of the burned out home from photojournalist Mahmoud Illean on the public news service Demotix...focus[es on]...the basketball.

    The only problem is that the basketball was placed there by a photographer!

    Haaretz reporter Chaim Levinson took his own photo of the ball and wrote on his Facebook page, "See the ball in the burnt room? It wasn't really there. A Palestinian photographer brought it in from the outside to improve the photo."

    Roy Sharon of Israel's Channel 10 tweeted the same thing. He wrote that if you see any photos of an orange ball in today's news coverage, you should know that it was placed there by the MBC (Saudi) channel photographer.

One thing more substantial does bother me about the media reporting though.

Why has no one (and I think I have mentioned this previously) tried to do a graphology comparison.  No, not the police.  The press.  Is it one hand writing the slogans?  Is it a Hebrew writer or another?  Is there anything that we can learn?  That is what an investigating reporter is supposed to do.

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