MIFTAH
Saturday, 10 May. 2025
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

It is with tremendous concern and frustration that we here, at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), write to you in reference to the recent CNN coverage of the ambush in the occupied West Bank city of El-Khalil (Hebron).

It is of no surprise that CNN has been referred to as the Israeli spin machine. CNN has repeatedly demonstrated its lack of understanding of the fundamental tenets of journalism, which are essentially to ask six critical questions: who, what, where, when, why and how.

In the aftermath of the exchange of fire between Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers and armed paramilitary illegal Israeli settlers, CNN was quick to jump on the official Israeli bandwagon by unquestioningly accepting distorted fabrications from the Israeli Foreign Ministry that once again demonstrate a complete absence of context of the reality on the ground.

Without even adhering to the basics of journalistic investigation, CNN was quick to cite reports from the Israeli authorities that, "A Jewish Sabbath celebration turned deadly in the West Bank today. Israeli authorities say at least 12 people were killed in Hebron when Palestinian militants opened fire on a group of Jews on their way to prayer service." (CNN, 15 November 2002)

Had CNN lived up to its professional responsibility of fair and accurate reporting, it should have raised some basic questions. First: Who was involved in the battle? Contradicting the Israeli claims that Jewish worshippers were being targeted, the accounts of the attack from the Hebron settlers own website www.hebron.co.il/news.html reported, "at 7:00 Arab terrorists attacked soldiers and security forces between Hebron and Kiryat Arba."

On the morning following the Nov 15 attack, the Israeli media itself reported that an army investigation found that the Palestinian attackers had instead targeted the Israeli army, not the settlers and not civilians.

Yet, CNN reports persisted in distorting the facts to present the battle as a massacre of innocents, on civilians and religious Jewish worshippers. On Nov. 16, CNN reported, "The bloodshed began as Jewish worshippers, accompanied by Israeli security forces, were walking home from Sabbath prayers in the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs in central Hebron, to the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba, about a half-mile (less than a kilometer) away, just to the east of the town."

CNN continues to propagate inaccurate information and act as the Israeli spin machine. CNN has a responsibility to report accurate and truthful information to its audience and should have the courage to admit and inform when false information was relayed by its "professional" and "impartial" reporters.

As an international news agency we fear you are doing your audience a great injustice by using half truth and failing to correct wrong information even when accurate information is available. We call on CNN to play a powerful role in reserving and protecting human rights and international law, through its fearless unbiased reporting based on the facts as they are and not a distortion of them.

Thank you,

MIFTAH

 
 
Read More...
 
Footer
Contact us
Rimawi Bldg, 3rd floor
14 Emil Touma Street,
Al Massayef, Ramallah
Postalcode P6058131

Mailing address:
P.O.Box 69647
Jerusalem
 
 
Palestine
972-2-298 9490/1
972-2-298 9492
info@miftah.org

 
All Rights Reserved © Copyright,MIFTAH 2023
Subscribe to MIFTAH's mailing list
* indicates required