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Thursday, July 21, 2016

Yahoo News Wins Title of Most Biased News Headlines

I just saw my Yahoo News feed and came across a story headlined "Israeli Soldiers Shoot and Kill Palestinian Boy."  Now I know that Yahoo News never misses an opportunity to push stories that show Israel in a bad light, but this seemed pretty serious nevertheless.  Then I read the story.  Here's what happened:

1.  In Jerusalem, a group of Palestinians threw a Molotov Cocktail at some Israeli soldiers out on patrol.  No one was injured, but the resulting fire was burning in the street.

2.  The Palestinians refused to disperse, so the Israeli soldiers fired tear gas grenades towards them.

3.  Either a teenage boy was hit by the grenade or was overcome by the tear gas.  In either case, the boy had a heart attack and died.

That's it.  And by the way, those details of the story do not come from other sources, but from the story with the headline in question.  So we have soldiers attacked by a group of Palestinians (not mentioned in headline), the use by the Palestinians of a fire bomb thrown at the soldiers (not mentioned in the headline), the response by the Israeli soldiers which did not include the use of guns (contradicted by the headline), the use of tear gas as a crowd control measure (not mentioned in the headline) and the death of a Palestinian teen from a heart attack (also not mentioned in the headline).

What is the point of having headlines if they are just a batch of lies that have no support in the story?  Well, for Yahoo News, it's a chance to spread negative stories about Israel even thought the stories are false.

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