Sky News reporter doesn't do basic fact checking

There is no doubt that there are may innocent victims in Gaza of Hamas' human shield tactics.

There is also no doubt that Gazans will reflexively lie to reporters - and reporters will believe the lies.

From Sky News, with a video on heavy rotation on their newscasts:

Maha is seven years old and paralysed from the neck down.

Her mother and sister were killed in the airstrike on their house. She remembers everything about it.

She told Sky News: "We were sitting at home when we heard the noise. So we went down under the stairs.

"This is where we were injured. Some of us stayed alive, some of us died."

Her family tells her that she will get better, but any real hope of that depends on urgent treatment abroad.

Mahasen Sheikh Khalil, her aunt, explained: "She doesn't know that she could stay paralysed like this.

"She's waiting to go for treatment abroad so she might get well.

"She says to me, 'Aunt, if I can move my hand then I can eat by myself. I just want to stand up, move and play.'"

The family has been told there are three hospitals willing to treat Maha - in Germany, Turkey, and the US - and a sponsor has agreed to cover the cost.

But they need to get her our of Gaza first, and they are still waiting for permission from Israel.

After this story came out, IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner tweeted the author of the article:

Hey @skystallard my preliminary inquiry found that out of some 1300 patients, no request for Maha has been submitted for to leave Gaza.
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) August 11, 2014

Yes, the Sky News reporter didn't even bother to ask the Israelis why they were cruelly barring little cute paralyzed Maha from being treated. It turns out - they weren't.

The truth is worse. Someone in Gaza - whether it is Hamas, or Maha's family - purposefully kept Maha in the hospital in Gaza for over three weeks rather than request to have her treated in Israel or moved abroad. (The article doesn't say whether they tried to go through Egypt.)

In the end, this isn't a story about Israeli cruelty. This is a story about how Gazans will happily endanger their own people in order to score propaganda points.

Too bad the writer is so biased that she couldn't bother to even do the most basic confirmation of a story told by people who are indoctrinated to lie to reporters.

Even Arab media like Ma'an will call and ask the IDF to confirm stories. One would think that Sky News had at least the bare minimum of journalistic standards. Apparently, when Israel gets blamed for something, all pretense of objectivity goes out the window.

(h/t Margie)