Chris Nesi and Olivia Land at the New York Post are reporting that The Washington Post has apologized for its misleading front page on Monday morning, which juxtaposed a photograph showing mourners of an 11-year-old killed in a Hezbollah rocket strike on a soccer field next to a headline that said "Israel hits targets in Lebanon."
The headline "did not provide adequate context,” the paper admitted in an editor’s note Tuesday. “The headlines should have noted that the Israeli strikes were a response to a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.”
WaPo publishes editor’s note in today’s paper admitting not “providing adequate context” in its coverage of Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s attack that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights. pic.twitter.com/sS7LphONGu
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) July 30, 2024
The WashPost was roundly criticized online over its gaffe, including by the Israel Defense Forces, which posted on Twitter/X: “You can see the grieving family members burying children murdered by Hezbollah in the Madjal Shams massacre. If by chance you understood anything else from their headline, you might not be the problem.” Other accounts echoed it:
“That’s an image of a funeral of a girl KILLED IN ISRAEL BY A HEZBOLLAH ROCKET FROM LEBANON, so why is the Washington Post headline backwards?” Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy added on X alongside a screenshot of the front page.
Pro-Israel Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) also questioned the paper’s decision to frame Israel as the “aggressor” underneath an image of a child killed by the terror group.
This isn't the first apologetic Editor's Note that the Bezos property has been forced to post since last October 7. The Jewish Insider noted in January that they published a factually challenged front-page story, published in mid-November, that detailed the struggles of premature Palestinian infants born in the West Bank and Israel who were separated from their parents amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
In an extensive editor’s note added to the story last week after more than a month’s delay, the paper listed multiple inaccuracies in the original article, effectively undermining its core thesis — that Palestinian mothers were required by the Israeli government to return to Gaza when their travel permits had expired. Meanwhile, the note also acknowledged that the triple-bylined feature had not initially sought comment from Israeli officials, “an omission that fell short of the Post’s standards for fairness.”
