The Associated Press is the world's oldest and largest wire service and is the major source of international news for news media all over the U.S. It is also blatantly pro-Israel.
Its "control bureau" for the region is staffed almost exclusively by Israeli and/or Jewish editors, who write the reports that it chooses to send out. Its pattern of reporting consistently emphasizes Israeli deaths, of which there have actually been very few in recent years, while minimizing Palestinian deaths, of which there have been a great many.
The deaily headlines that it features consistently reinforce the Israeli spin rather than the reality on the ground.
For example, Israel is once again shelling Gaza. In the last few days Israeli forces have killed eight Palestinians in Gaza, including a grandfather and three children, including an 11-year-old. It shelled a family out playing soccer. Dozens of people have been injured. Yet, these deaths barely remained in its headlines for one day. It did not report on the family members' grief, the UN condemnation of Israel's actions, etc. Yesterday, one Israeli died in a bomb blast in Jerusalem. This is still in its headlines, along with related stories.
Reading AP coverage always reminds me of the unusually honest admission by a student journalist reported in 2001 in San Francisco's Jewish Bulletin about how he would report on Israel when he became a professional journalist:
"If I find a negative thing about Israel, I will not print it and I will sink into why did it happen and what can I do to change it. [He] said that even if he eventually wrote about negative incidents that happen in Israel, he would try to find the way to shift the blame."
It is interesting to see that the media continue to refer to the tragic Itamar murders, without mentioning the indications that the perpetrator may have not been Palestinian. They also leave out a number of other details of considerable newsworthiness.
To try to counter this Israeli-spin-passing-as-reporting, we've created an an easily printed out hand-out of my article about Itamar, which includes an extremely long list of Palestinian children 13 and under killed by Israeli forces.
I hope people will distribute this as widely as possible. Bulk copies can be ordered from us at minimal or no cost. You can order these online or email us at orders@ifamericansknew.org
It is critical that we all work to expose this cover-up and disseminate the facts.