Commentary » Blog Archive » Hamas’ Extracurricular Activities
Allow me to propose a metric for evaluating whether a journalist is behaving responsibly or not: If he reports that Israel bombed a UN school and killed 30 civilians, he is irresponsible. If he reports that Hamas used a UN school as a weapons cache and base of operations for launching mortars at the IDF, and the IDF’s return fire killed the Hamas cell along, tragically, with a yet-unspecified number of civilians, then he is behaving responsibly. If he wishes to be particularly scrupulous, he might additionally note that Hamas had rigged the school with explosives which detonated after the IDF took out the mortar team, killing a large additional number of civilians. And he might add that you can go to the IDF’s Youtube channel to view footage from 2007 of Hamas using the very same school as a mortar-launching base.
Journalists who abjure reporting the vital details of this story should be called what they are — activists masquerading as reporters.
Yes, they should be, but they won’t be. Why? Because most “reporters” in the mainstream media are activists masquerading as journalists.
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Back when I was doing that sort of thing, activist journalism was the crazy first wife in the attic. Since then the house has burned down.
It’s also worth noting, none of the points listed here would be present in Hamas’ already-prepared press release, and by the time the IDF would get around to responding, the news cycle would have moved on.