On September 5, 2023, The Toronto Star, The National Post, and CTV News published an Associated Press (AP) article whose headline failed to properly identify a Palestinian killed by IDF soldiers during a counter-terror raid in Judea and Samaria (known in media parlance as the “west bank”), as a gunman and a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization. Untold in these media outlets headline’s and only acknowledged in the fourth paragraph of the article, it was reported that: “The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group later claimed the man as its member.”Readers who just read the headline and not the corresponding article, would likely come to the false conclusion that the dead Palestinian was an innocent civilian, when in truth, he was a combatant, a member of a banned terrorist group, and an armed gunman who fired at Israeli soldiers. In sharp contrast, Reuters covered this story with the following headline which identified the individual, not only as being a member of the Islamic Jihad terror group , but also of being a “gunman”:HonestReporting Canada filed a complaint with the Associated Press requesting that the headline be amended and corrected as soon as possible in the interests of fairness and accuracy, and we are pleased to report that the AP validated our concerns and amended the article’s headline, which now properly identifies the dead Palestinians as being “a militant” and a “teenage gunman”. We thank the Associated Press for implementing prompt corrective action and we appreciate that CTV News, The Toronto Star and the National Post’s articles now feature the corrected AP report which properly identifies the deceased Palestinian as being a teenage gunman from a militant group.
