Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Was the Dog's Name 'Jenin'?

Ever keen to make Israel look bad whenever they can, some mainstream media outlets, including the Beeb and the NY Times, glommed onto a story about an Israeli court ruling that a pooch had to be put to death by stoning (thereby implying that Israel's "religious" law is as wacky as sharia). Only one problem--the story's totally bogus.

Oh, well. No doubt those predisposed to think badly of the Jewish state who ran with the story will "rectify" the situation by printing a (small, hard to find) retraction.

4 comments:

Backseat Blogger said...

On the other hand:

Dishonest Reporting: How The Aish HaTorah Funded Media Watchdog Honest Reporting Distorts News

scaramouche said...

A website that has an ugly grudge against Orthodox Judaism--yeah, I'd take that as an authoritative source of facts and opinion.

Backseat Blogger said...

i agree with what you say about his point of view

but what about what he actually says in the post?

particularly his point about ynet:

But here is what Ynet's story says:

…The head of the court, Rabbi Avraham Dov Levin, denied that the judges had called for the dog's stoning. But one of the court's managers confirmed the report to Yedioth Ahronoth.

"It was ordered by the rabbis because of the grief he had caused the court," he said. "They didn't issue an official ruling, but ordered the children outside to throw stones at him in order to drive him away. They didn't think of it as cruelty to animals, but as an appropriate way to 'get back at' the spirit which entered the poor dog.”…

So Ynet has confirmation from inside the rabbinical court. The stoning was ordered by these ultra-Orthodox rabbis, and then the head of the rabbinic court lied to cover it up. And Honest Reporting fails to mention this important fact.

scaramouche said...

On the whole, HR does a stellar job of exposing media bias. I'm prepared to forgive them this one lapse.