I have stumbled across the following image and there is a major issue with the description.

http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Detail.aspx?axd…

Go to that link, the comment says “Jewish settlers scrawled bad words on the walls of a mosque… The settlers scrawled ‘Mohammed is a pig’ and ‘Death to the Arabs’ on the front of a mosque”
Clearly, your Hebrew is extremely rusty, because what is written on the wall is actually a quote from the Jewish Bible, aka the Tanach. Please update this on your website. As a trusted media outlet you should maintain a higher level of integrity. Please respond to this with your answer so I know it was received. I sure hope this was a mistake and not intentional. Pleaser note that I am NOT saying what happened is okay at all, in fact I condemn it, however you still have the responsibility to accurately report on the situation.

Seth reports he received the following response:

Hello

Thank you for your recent email. We are correcting our captioning for the images in question.

Thanks again,

Vincent Formanek
Getty Images
1-800-IMAGERY

vincent.formanek@gettyimages.com

Seth posted this comment 7 hours ago, which means Getty Images has had over 7 hours to correct the caption. Yet as of the time of this post, the misleading caption remains.

I wouldn’t have thought correcting a caption would be such a time consuming process.

Then again, I wouldn’t have thought the media’s job was to report events any which way they like.

Jewish settlers beat up Palestinian boy near Hebron

Bilal Daana was attacked by a group of settlers near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron. They beat him up and threw stones at him, the Palestinian medics said.

The boy was taken by Israeli soldiers to a checkpoint at the entrance to Hebron from where he was transferred to the local Al-Ahli hospital.

The incident was the latest in a surge of settler attacks on Palestinians, peace activists and Israeli soldiers since the authorities dismantled a settlement outpost near Hebron last month.

In other words, the headline and last paragraph convey what is essentially an allegation by palestinian medics as fact.

Interestingly enough, not all of the palestinian media outlets are reporting this incident, including Ramattan News and WAFA.

Meanwhile, here is how the palestinian Ma’an News reports it:

Israeli settlers wounded six-year-old Palestinian Bilal Da’na from Hebron after pelting the young boy with stones near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, Palestinian sources in Hebron said.

Notice the difference between this version and the AFP version?

In the AFP version, the palestinian medics claimed that the “settlers” “beat him up and threw stones at him,” whereas the Ma’an version mentions only “pelting..with stones.” Which is it? Surely if the “settlers” had really beat up the child, the palestinian media would have mentioned this.

Sounds to me like the palestinian medics elaborated for the sake of the international media. And the international media were more than willing to report their version as fact.

Time may tell whether or not this palestinian boy was indeed injured by Jewish residents of Kiryat Arba. What is clear, though, is once again, the mainstream media are not reporting fairly or accurately.

A picture courtesy from Reuters shows AFP’s Palestinian photographer Hazem Bader (R) holding his bleeding head after he was hit by a stone hurled at journalists by Israeli settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron on October 31, 2008. Bader, 42, was taken to a Hebron hospital with his head bleeding. He was given eight stitches to the forehead and was to spend the night in the hospital. He was among a group of journalists who had gone to the house of a Palestinian that was damaged by settlers after Israeli security forces dismantled a nearby illegal Jewish outpost.

Oh, now the foreign press photographers see stones as a dangerous weapon that can seriously injure or even kill people?

Funny, because when the stone-throwers are palestinians, they are portrayed as heroic defenders acting against the odds. And I have certainly never seen a photo and caption such as the above, showing and describing the damage inflicted on an Israeli hit by a palestinian-thrown stone.

Palestinian former-prisoner Sonia al-Rai smiles surrounded by friends and family at the Jalama checkpoint near the West Bank city of Jenin on October 26, 2008, after being released from an Israeli jail after 11 years. Sonia al-Rai, 40, held longer than any other female inmate in an Israeli jail, was released today and met by friends and relatives amid celebrations at the Jalama checkpoint near Jenin. Rai was arrested in 1997 after she attempted to attack an Israeli soldier.

Leaving aside the fact this woman looks constipated, what is interesting is the caption. You’d be forgiven for thinking that perhaps Israel was being a bit harsh. 11 years for attempting to attack a soldier? What did she do anyway? Throw rocks at them?

The answer is found on the website of the PFLP, the terrorist organization to which she belongs.

She carried out a military operation on the ninth anniversary of the martyrdom of her brother, shooting Israeli occupation soldiers and border guards at the Al-Karama crossing (Allenby Bridge). Comrade Souna noted that since a young age she was committed to the promise of undertaking a military operation in honor of her brother and in retaliation against the occupation for its ongoing crimes against our people. She spoke to the ability and the heritage of Palestinian women’s participation in all forms of struggle, noting the Palestinian women heroes and martyrs – comrade Leila Khaled, Dalal al-Mughrabi, Shadia abu Ghazalah, and many other heroes, martyrs and prisoners.

In other words, this was not some spontaneous, lashing out against some soldier. This was an orchestrated terrorist attack designed to kill.

Update: The palestinian Ramattan News Agency does not even mention an attack, instead stating that she was arrested “for her activities in the Intifada and membership of the PFLP.”

Update: AP actually gets it right with this caption.

Released Palestinian prisoner Sonia Al Rai, 40, is carried by family and supporters after crossing the Israeli army’s Jalameh Checkpoint near the West Bank city of Jenin, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. Al Rai was released at the end of a 12-year sentence for attempting to kill an Israeli soldier on the Allenby Bridge border crossing that connects Jordan to the West Bank. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

One can only wonder what the response would be had these men been Muslim.

Palestinian youth ready to lob stones at the Israeli army during clashes at the entrance to the West Bank village of Nilin close to the city of Ramallah on August 14 2008. Over the past four years, Nilin has been the scene of near daily demonstrations against Israel’s barrier of concrete and steel that cuts through parts of the West Bank. Israel says that the barrier is needed for its security, critics describe it as a land grab. Earlier in the week a young Palestinian boy was fatally shot in the back of the head at one such demonstration in the village.

Yeah, I’m sure the man in the foreground is just drinking. Kind of like Popsicle Man, only with a hankering for treats of the liquid variety.

Alternatively, he’s going to lob it at the troops, which is dangerous enough because it’s glass, and could be even deadlier if he decides to get creative in the Molotov sense.

Not that stones don’t do a lot of damage themselves. But the point is AFP are once again being dishonest.

A Palestinian activist throws a stone as a kind of military grenade bounces next to him during a demonstration against Israel’s controversial separation barrier in the West Bank village of Billin near Ramallah on June 13, 2008. A Palestinian suffered a severe live gunshot wound today, along with seven others who were wounded by rubber bullets, when Israeli troops dispersed a protest against Israel’s barrier in the occupied West Bank, medics and witnesses said.

Of course, that “kind of military grenade” is a tear gas canister.

But since they don’t actually kill, the AFP did not see fit to describe it as such.

It not fitting their narrative and all.