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| A call for Responsible Journalism |
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| An open letter to Haaretz From Maurice Ostroff The otherwise informative front-page report by Lily Galili "The left won't be held hostage by the Likud" (Haaretz May 16) is vitiated by the same inexcusable offense as the London Daily Mirror's printing of a fake picture. That the Mirror's editor, Piers Morgan, believed the facts were true was not accepted in mitigation and he was summarily fired because he failed to check the authenticity of information he was providing. We Haaretz readers, are also entitled to expect that your editors not only verify the accuracy of information provided, but also ensure that it is placed in context so as not to mislead by inference or unjustified allusions.. Although Galili's offense is not as sensational as Morgan's, it is equally guilty of distorting facts. I refer to her irrelevant introduction of the 22 year old Sabra and Shatilla massacre into a report about a current rally for disengagement. In particular, I refer to her inference that Sharon was directly responsible by claiming that the masses stood calling Sharon a murderer. The text is misleading because few readers will recall that it was Lebanese Christian Phalangist leader, Hobeika, who was directly responsible for the massacres and that the Kahan commission found that Sharon was not directly responsible for them, but that at the worst he was guilty of incompetence. Haaretz would do well to bear in mind that Sharon successfully sued Time Magazine for publishing an article which did not directly state, but only implied, as did Galili, that Ariel Sharon was guilty of this crime. |
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