Beware of the Associated Press

Sent to the Connecticut Post, December 16, 2024:

Dear Editor:

I urge the Connecticut Post to thoroughly review AP articles about the war Hamas started last October 7 with its barbaric massacre before publishing them. There is troubling bias in these articles, particularly evident in “Middle East latest: UN General Assembly demands a ceasefire in Gaza” (Dec 12).

For starters, it’s insufficient to call Hamas “militants”. They are a globally recognized terrorist organization that committed the worst atrocities against Jews since World War II. It bears remembering that on October 7, they killed, tortured, and kidnapped people from several dozen countries including the US. Additionally, they are part of the Iran-backed network responsible for recent terror attacks in Europe and Scandanavia and foiled attacks in other western democracies. They have earned the designation ‘terrorist’ and failing to say that is journalistic malpractice.

In addition, the AP refers repeatedly to “Israeli airstrikes” in both headlines and content, parroting the unreliable Hamas-provided "statistics" and failing to ever mention that most of those killed were terrorists with others, willingly or unwillingly, being used by Hamas as human shields. In contrast, in the section on a terrorist attack that killed a 12-year-old Jewish boy and injured several others on a bus, the “suspected Palestinian” detail is left off the headline completely and doesn’t even appear until the second line of the section.


To put it simply, AP reporters have an ethical obligation to mention the proven unreliability of  Hamas-provided casualty figures and to identify Hamas terrorism and Palestinian jihad just as readily as they identify Israeli airstrikes. They don't seem to do that; the Connecticut Post editors should ask why.

Sincerely,

Alan Stein

The writer, formerly a long-time resident of Connecticut, is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting)


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