Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris
— gabrielebarbati (@gabrielebarbati) July 29, 2014
In this one tweet, we have confirmation:
- The rocket that killed the 9 children came from Hamas.
- When Hamas made the area off limits to reporters, it was cleaning the area from any debris that could show the truth.
- Hamas intimidates even good journalists from telling the truth, so much so that they won't report what they see while they are in Gaza.
This is more than an independent confirmation of what the IDF said.
It is more than a confirmation that the IDF tells the truth and that Hamas knowingly lies.
This is a scandal: Every single Gaza reporter who was there in Shati and Shifa are keeping their mouths shut.
Yesterday I wrote that every reporter got it wrong. I was too kind. Every reporter knowingly trampled on the truth.
If reporters being in Gaza only promotes Hamas propaganda and willfully ignores the truth, then what value is there to send "journalists" there to begin with? You might as well just translate the Hamas Ministry of Information webpage and call it a day. Because that is exactly what the reporting out of Gaza has been like.
Every single report on TV from Gaza should have this disclaimer:
"Our reporters have been threatened, implicitly and perhaps explicitly, by Hamas to only report one side of the story.Viewers must not trust anything they are saying."
There is an assumption of fairness in journalism, a contract between the media and the viewers. This contract has been broken, as far as I can tell, by nearly every single reporter in Gaza in nearly every report, with a couple of rare exceptions.
I understand that it isn't easy to report from a war zone. But when reporters are so willing to follow the dictates of the local government, and to allow themselves to be threatened without reporting that fact, then their reporting is nearly worthless, and they simply cannot be trusted.