• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    27 days ago

    Reuters isn’t reporting what happened, they’re reporting on what Israel said happened.
    They are, to the best of their abilities, a non-editorial news source.
    “Israel lies about target of attack” is editorial, regardless of accuracy.

    The report about what happened is a different article

    In the content of the article about Israels statement they open with it being journalists who were killed, continue to point out that they had been there for weeks and that it’s normal for news outlets to do this, which is why multiple news agencies were at that location. They also only refer to the targets as “alleged targets” who were “allegedly militants”.

    They also list the report about the man and his killing by Israeli forces above the story of what Israel said about it.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/obituary-hussam-al-masri-reuters-journalist-killed-by-israeli-fire-gaza-2025-08-27/

    We’ve gotten very used to media being by default editorial in nature. It doesn’t just say what happened, it tells us how to feel about what happened. A handful of new agencies still try to report on facts, and leave qualitative judgement for the reader.

    This does result in odd headlines sometimes when they report on stories they are involved in. Like this headline (which has been revised), or when the AP dutifully reports on the white house calling them lunatics for following standard journalistic writing style, mysteriously detailed in the “AP style guide”.

    Neutrality free from context or interpretation of any sort is opening the door for lies to have equal ground with the truth. Needing that context to be present in the headline without reading the body is starting to erode the notion of being unbiased.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      Nothing about being a “non-editorial news source” requires them to put misinformation in the title.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        27 days ago

        Did they put misinformation in the headline?

        How would you report on the IDF releasing an initial report that said they didn’t kill them on purpose?

        Does their rephrasing of the headline to “Reuters and AP journalists killed in Gaza strike were not ‘a target,’ an Israeli military spokesperson says” make a difference?

        I’m not saying it was a perfect headline, but it’s hardly misinformation.

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          27 days ago

          Yes, that rephrasing helps. Or something along the lines of “Israel Denies Deliberate Targeting of Reuters Journalist in Killing”.

          All of these options are factual. Every redaction has an editorial policy. The choice not to contextualize a headline is an editorial choice by definition. So is the choice of which institutions’ press briefings to report on.

          “[Redaction] doesn’t editorialize titles” is as much of an oxymoron as “[Government official] doesn’t do politics”. The unwillingness to take accountability for unavoidable decisions is a huge red flag and points to either duplicity or a very submissive approach to decision-making.

          • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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            27 days ago

            It’s true that all publishing decisions are ultimately editorial, but there’s a big difference between deciding to report on what IDF and Hamas representatives say while not reporting on social media opinion, and reporting speculation and interpretation of events.

            I don’t feel like they failed to contextualize the headline. It was a subpar headline updated for clarity shortly after publication.

            There just seems to be a lot of jumping on one of the more factual and objective news sources for a headline taken out of context for failing to include sufficient context.

            • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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              27 days ago

              It’s virtually impossible to conclusively prove ill-intent for any individual headline like this. However on the whole there is a clear bias from mainstream media outlets towards under-critically perpetuating Israel’s official, carefully controlled narrative – a narrative that they control in part through their own legitimacy as a recognized state, and in part through the deliberate murder and suppression of journalists.

              Israeli state officials keep putting out factually incorrect, disingenuous, harmful public statements to distract from their ongoing genocide. It pollutes an already VERY saturated information space, and any headline that uncritically passes on such a decontextualized F.U.D. fails its duty as journalistic messaging.

              Again, it could be an honest mistake from Reuters. But in such troubled times, it’s getting very hard to forgive those mistakes as innocent when the impact of such repeated failures has been so great.

              • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                27 days ago

                I mean, you can go look at Reuters headlines for the middle east.

                https://www.reuters.com/world/israel-hamas/

                It’s hardly uncritically accepting of Israels narrative goals, which would be expected for a news outlet that tries to report objectively.
                Given that the initial headline, which I don’t think was as bad as people are responding, was shortly changed and their long history of good reporting and current history of seemingly not following someones dictated narrative, I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

                • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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                  26 days ago

                  Sure, I’m not trying to dunk on Reuters specifically, I don’t really care either way. It’s about the principle of the thing, and the overall pattern of uncritical reporting in mainstream media.

                  F.U.D. is a strategy that works exceptionally well. It only takes a few headlines to sow the seeds of doubt that make uncontroversial stances increasingly untenable. Whether it’s Trump’s transparent lies, Big Oil/Tobacco/Asbestos’ transparent funding of bogus “studies”, or Israeli genocide denial, it doesn’t matter; once these narratives are allowed to spread decontextualized and uncontradicted, well-intentioned actors are forced to spend an wildly asymmetric amount of time and energy into debunking insane and disingenuous claims before they can even begin to lay out their own arguments.

                  With this in mind I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to be mad that a respectable journalistic institution would let even a single headline through that uncritically propagates Israeli F.U.D. covering up for war crimes.

                  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                    26 days ago

                    I mean, I honestly don’t think “Initial inquiry says Hamas camera target of Israeli strike that killed journalists” is uncritical propagation of Israeli FUD.

                    It’s not a good title, since it clearly causes a misunderstanding and it doesn’t convey key information like “whose investigation”, but it’s not disinformation.

        • Tiresia@slrpnk.net
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          26 days ago

          Yes. If a Rwandese government spokesperson said the same thing about Rwandese military killing a Reuters journalist in eastern Kivu, Reuters would not quote their statement as “initial inquiry says”. And likewise if China said the same thing about Chinese military killing a Reuters journalist in Xinyang province.

          Reuters would be skeptical towards a genocidal regime with a long history of lying to Reuters if that genocidal regime wasn’t in NATO. It would clarify who was doing the inquiry just to remind readers and journalists buying the story off them that that organisation is not to be trusted.

          Headlines are compact. Their words are carefully chosen. Leaving out who is doing the inquiry is as much of a statement as any other word choice. Anyone who reads headlines understands that leaving it out means the inquiry is being done by a relatively trusted institution.

          But yeah, of course it’s “hardly misinformation”. That’s how all good propaganda works. If a news source lies to you, you’re better off not reading it. But if it tells you truths in a misleading way, then maybe the truth can empower you more than the misleadingness can harm you…

      • Tuukka R@sopuli.xyz
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        26 days ago

        If “Israel claims that it was a Hamas camera” is misinformation, then that means Israel has never made that claim.

        Are you sure the inquite made by Israel did not claim that it was a Hamas camera? Where did Reuters invent the claim, which is quite damning for Israel? (And if Israel never made that erroneous claim in their inquiry but Reuters lies that they did, doesn’t that make Reuters anti-Israel rather than pro-Israel?)

    • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      27 days ago

      Well, I’m saying Benjamin Netanyahu, while masturbating to a real time generated video of adolf hitler that copies his movements like a mirror, said “anyone not actively trying to kill me is antisemitic”.

      Why hasn’t reuters reported that yet?

      I’m sorry, but reporting something the known lying liar says without a disclaimer when you have the most spectacular possible proof (literally a live stream! Your live stream!) to the contrary is not ‘reporting what happened’. It is amplifying a lie about what happened.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        27 days ago

        They’re not reporting that because you’re not a significant public figure.

        Now, I think they were targeting journalists. Explain to me how the video or live stream from their reporter is proof that their intended target was the journalists. They’re not disputing that they killed them, just what their intentions were.
        It’s difficult to prove intentions without having some form of explicit documentation of the sort that’s unlikely to be forthcoming from the Israeli military.
        You can point out that they’ve killed a lot of journalists (which they did), that international journalism organizations are calling for UN intervention and sanctions for the targeting of journalists (which they did), that the stream was not new or an unknown thing, and the location had been being used by multiple news organizations for coverage (which they did), that their second strike hit medical responders from the bombed hospital (which they did), that they’re historically not productive at investigations into their killing of journalists (which they did), that there’s counter claims that the people they claimed to have been targeting were known to be elsewhere or were previously killed in a different location (which they did).

        Those are facts. They paint a clear picture from which one can easily draw a conclusion, but that conclusion is not a fact.

        Are you that desperate for every line of every relevant news article to align with your beliefs that you can’t tolerate a news agency reporting “Israel claims they didn’t do it on purpose”?

        • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          27 days ago

          significant

          Significant for what though?

          what evidence

          Dunno, havent seen the video, but the statement us that they were targeting a hamas what? They literally admitted it.

          must always assume theyre telling the truth

          This is worse journalism than the elon musk owned media platform ‘twitter’. The platform. Add a tag that says ‘these guys lie a lot’ or send it straight to the archive, never published on the main site. Include the fact that ot may not be true.

          And why do we even need to know they said this? It’s not like their words have meaning anymore; the texture of their poop is genuinely more illuminating most of the time. ‘Israeli minister of defense scorzeny, recently reanimated in a ritual involving a swimming pool full of palestinian children’s blood and pureed genitals, sprayed the inside of the bowl with an orange goo in several hacking bursts this morning, followed by a short light brown log’ tells me more than the shit they said.

          There are lots of solutions here, you just seem to be arguing for the status quo and figuring out why as the need arises.

          • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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            27 days ago

            Are you claiming you are a public figure in any sense? Do I actually need to explain why “the IDF” is significant to a story about Israeli military action?

            Dunno, havent seen the video, but the statement us that they were targeting a hamas what? They literally admitted it.

            I’m not understanding you or your point here. Yes, they did admit to killing the journalists. Everyone has reported on this and it’s not in dispute. The report was about Israel claiming their death was unintentional, not that they claimed they were Hamas or that they didn’t do it.
            What could possibly be in the video that would prove they intended to kill the journalists, as opposed to them being collateral damage? I doubt the Reuters live stream caught the IDF commander who ordered the strike articulating his intentions.

            must always assume theyre telling the truth

            Not sure why this is a quote. I didn’t say that. You don’t need to assume someone is telling the truth to report what they said as being something they said.

            And why do we even need to know they said this?

            You don’t. You can close the webpage and not follow the news and you’ll probably be happier in the long run.

            You’re arguing that an organization that exists to provide objective reporting shouldn’t do that because sometimes they report that someone you dislike made a claim you disagree with.

            I’m arguing that it’s okay to report facts without commentary. I’m somehow able to conclude that Israel was targeting the journalists based on the context provided in the report without needing the report to tell me the conclusion to have upfront.

            • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              27 days ago

              But they’re not reporting all the facts.

              If they printed the zio commentary as a response with a video of theit live stream, this would be less absurd.

              Like how you haven’t raped any kittens then used their bloody cum soaked crying little bodies to bully and beat school children until the kittens were dead since your lunch break. Im pretty sure this is true about a horrible thing you haven’t done this side of your most recent lunch break. Congratulations not doing any kitten focused atrocities (in the past couple hours).

              You seem to think that communication only has one side, and that thinking about likely interpretation of your words is disingenuous. This is like communication 101 shit, though. Im literally autistic and i learned this from literal fairy tales before i was out of primary school. It’s so fucking basic i cannot believe you genuinely don’t understand this. I am literally retarded about specifically this, and i have an understanding so much more robust than your claim that even explaining how you’re wrong feel like an act of violent deliberate alienation.

              Nobody with a genuine education or who is not literally retarded could possibly be so profoundlu stupid as to believe decontextualizing knowledge and then telling you little bits is somehow ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ or ‘incapable of being lies’.

              Edit: i could also ask if you ever went to school, but i mostly didn’t and i figured it the fuck out. I could ask if you’re high, but im also riding the afterglow of a pretty spicy worthy-of-mkultra coctail myself, and this concept is still entirely clear to me.

              Unless you have severe brain damage, i guess. So do you have severe brain damage? Were you fed a diet of lead paint as a child and then hit in the head until you believed this, or are you fucking lying?

              • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                27 days ago

                Here’s the video you wanted: https://youtu.be/C_pg-5B8K2I

                What facts do you think they’re leaving out? Do you think this one headline is their only coverage?

                I am literally retarded about specifically this

                And yet you think you know more about it than a renowned news organization?

                Again, what context do you think is missing? Did you read the report or just some twitter hot takes about the title?

                You seem to think that communication only has one side, and that thinking about likely interpretation of your words is disingenuous

                What? What part of “other articles have information about the dispute of Israeli claims”, and those disputes being explicitly brought up in the article is only paying attention to one side? You’re looking for editorial if you want your news to give you an interpretation, and propaganda if you’re looking for it to lead the reader to a specific one.

                decontextualizing knowledge and then telling you little bits is somehow ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ or ‘incapable of being lies’.

                Where did I say that? Spoiler alert: I didn’t, that’s just what you would rather argue against.

                You’re very keen on insulting people you’re talking to or devolving into the grotesque aren’t you? It just makes you come across as childish and it’s much easier to dismiss your opinions as those of an ignorant child.
                I get it. You think your interpretation of the facts and the implied narrative is so clear and obvious that it’s dishonest not to include it alongside a report, so when they issue a report on the IDFs initial internal investigation findings you feel like someone is trying to spin things for Israel when they don’t actively support your narrative, even if they don’t support Israels either.
                They aren’t however. Your interpretation and narrative didn’t happen, they’re implied. You can’t take footage of motivation. The only insight we have into how the IDF selects targets is what they say, so the only facts are “Israel states their intent is to not kill journalists”, “this isn’t the first time they’ve killed a journalist this week”, and “not even the first Reuters journalist”.

                • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  27 days ago

                  Can’t watch youtube from here. Security settings are a pain to change, and this doesn’t merit.

                  appeal to authority

                  Well if you could explain why that’s not a nonsense bullshit position, sure. But you haven’t shown any interest in doing that. It shouldn’t be hard. Please, make literally any attempt. I’ll try my best to understand.

                  other articles have information about the dispute of

                  Not “this is a confirmed unreliable source”. So it’s still the headline any zio can use, but totally honest to an audience who consumes media in a way nobody consumes media these days. This is called honest reporting.

                  grotesque

                  Youre talking about the murder of journalists trying to catch genocidal war criminals being excused and normalized by the outlets that hired them. I sought only to match that level of fucked, and i genuinely don’t think i was successful. If you think i was escalating, maybe that’s an issue with you.

                  your interpretation

                  The writer is interpreting even on what they consider “neutral”. How can you, in the year twenty rwenty five, nit understand this? Genuinely how?

                  both sides

                  Okay so you’re lying. Like, there’s cases where both sides, nut this really isn’t one

                  the only insight is uncritical parroting of what we’re told

                  Also a god damn century of precedent, the last hundred times this happened, explicit doctrine, how this story turbed out the last five hundred times we read it this year, the social media of the fucker who pulled the trigger (even odds they were also live streaming it over a truly horrible abuse of the rap genre) and report-backs from anyone with a strong enough stomach to press “hebrew to english” on their translation tool of choice. Yes. Other than those things all we have is their word against the word of the usual smouldering corpses.

                  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                    26 days ago

                    Yeah, acting like you’re quoting but instead changing the words to what you want them to be makes it really hard to figure out what the fuck you’re saying.

                    Summary of the video: a cellphone video of the second strike. The Livestream feed showing smoke in the distance and then cutting off. A video from a camera person approaching the bombsite before getting hit in the second strike. A voice over detailing what happened, Israels statement, the Palestinian press association calling it an unacceptable act of terrorizing journalists attempting to report the truth, and the response from other relevant parties, like Reuters.

                    Well if you could explain why that’s not a nonsense bullshit position, sure. But you haven’t shown any interest in doing that. It shouldn’t be hard. Please, make literally any attempt. I’ll try my best to understand.

                    Do you mean trusting Reuters more than you? It has something to do with you overtly stating that you don’t know what you’re talking about and being opposed to factual reporting while Reuters has a reputation as a reliable news source. And I see that you went back and edited your comment to include you being uneducated and deleriously inebriated.

                    I’m not sure what other position you could be referring to, since I’ve explained things pretty clearly and repeatedly.

                    audience who consumes media in a way nobody consumes media these days

                    … Reading the article? Not getting their news from a screenshot of a tweet? If you need media outlets to not even reference in a headline someone you disagree with saying the murder was unintentional, you’re looking for propaganda.

                    I sought only to match that level of fucked

                    You thought to yourself “genocide and killing journalists is horrific, I better talk about raping kittens”? That’s even more bizarre than you being a child who thought it added dramatic flair.

                    Okay so you’re lying. Like, there’s cases where both sides, nut this really isn’t one

                    I’m actively at a loss for what you’re talking about here. I went back and I never talked about sides. The closest I came was trying to empathize with your viewpoint?

                    You list a pile of things that would be evidence for their motivation that weren’t reported on. Do you actually have any of those things? A recording of the pilot saying they were gonna go bomb some journalists would actually be evidence.

                    No one is taking their word for anything. Do you understand the difference between repeating what someone says and saying that they said it?