Read Update Below
7 months ago, I posted how the BBC told a false story on what attacked the INS Hanit during the second Lebanon war.
An Israeli navy ship was damaged by an explosive drone in July 2006.
It wasn’t a drone, but an anti-ship missile.
Sky News did a report on the Israeli Navy, and included this tidbit:
The “Islamic Resistance” at [sic] it calls itself, has been trying to get its hands on strategic weapons that could maintain a balance of threat with Israel.
These include surface to air and surface to ship missiles – the latter sank [sank] an Israeli missile carrying ship during the 2006 war.
Let’s ignore the typing, grammatical and descriptive errors (what’s a missile carrying ship?!). Not only did the INS Hanit not sink, it was put back in service a few weeks after the incident.
The only ship that was sunk by Hezbullah was a Cambodian merchant vessel.
There’s something about the INS Hanit that turns journalists into idiots. Even looking at the Wikipedia entry one can see the ship was definitely not sunk.
Fact-checking? Na, let’s just print whatever Hezbullah says.
Update:
Success! two days later, Sam Kiley corrected his error.
@judgedan48 you are quite right. Slip of the pen.
— Sam Kiley (@kileysky) May 13, 2013
It now reads:
The “Islamic Resistance” at [sic] it calls itself, has been trying to get its hands on strategic weapons that could maintain a balance of threat with Israel.
These include surface to air and surface to ship missiles – the latter badly damaged an Israeli missile carrying ship during the 2006 war.
Oh well…
Kudos to Kiley for replying and correcting the error, yet these shouldn’t even happen in the first place. Is it too much to ask for that what is being reported as facts be verified, or at least spotted by the editor?
