The Reuters news agency was forced to issue a correction Monday after falsely attributing a plan for the relocation of Palestinians in Gaza to the Trump administration-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The article originally claimed in its headline: “Exclusive: US-backed aid group proposed ‘Human Transit Areas’ for Palestinians in Gaza.”
It claimed, further:
A controversial U.S.-backed aid group proposed building camps called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside – and possibly outside – Gaza to house the Palestinian population, according to a proposal reviewed by Reuters, outlining its vision of “replacing Hamas’ control over the population in Gaza.”
The $2 billion plan, created sometime after February 11 for the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, was submitted to the Trump administration and recently discussed in the White House, according to a source familiar with the matter.
There was no basis or the story — the latest in a series of mainstream media efforts to smear the GHF, which is replacing the United Nations and undermining Hamas’s control over the delivery of aid in Gaza.
Reuters later published a corrected version, “Exclusive: Proposal outlines large-scale ‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’ for Palestinians in Gaza.”
At the end of the story, it added: “(This story has been corrected to remove ‘U.S.-backed aid group’ in the headline, and to reflect that while the document bears the name of the Global Humanitarian Foundation, it could not be determined who created or submitted it, in paragraphs 1 and 2).”
It could not even report the name of the group correctly in the correction.
GHF issued a statement:
Earlier today Reuters published a story that its reporters and editors knew to be false. The story cited a presentation Reuters claimed was connected to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). We made it unequivocally clear, on the record, that the document was not ours, does not reflect our work, and has absolutely no connection to GHF or to our mission. Reuters ran the story anyway.
Now, they’ve issued a correction and admitted they got the story wrong, but the damage is already done.
This story was baseless, fueled by bad-faith sources, and designed to manufacture controversy, not uncover truth. Despite repeated denials, and a total lack of evidence, Reuters chose to publish disinformation over fact, undermining the very integrity of journalism they claim to uphold.
We’ve seen this pattern play out before, from the Washington Post to NBC News. This is only the latest example of inaccurate, agenda-driven coverage of GHF being used to distort and distract from our one mission to meet the urgent and overwhelming needs of the population in Gaza.
This latest failure by Reuters should be a wake-up call for media across the globe. In a war zone flooded with disinformation, propaganda, and bad-faith actors, journalism must rise to the moment not sink to the level of clickbait.
GHF is working tirelessly to distribute free food aid directly to the people of Gaza safely and without interference. This is important, life-saving work, only made harder by irresponsible, baseless media coverage. The media has a responsibility to do better.
Earlier in the day, GHF reported that it had distributed nearly 65 million meals since launching in May.
The future of GHF is currently being negotiated: Hamas wants its operations to end as a condition of a ceasefire with Israel, while the Trump administration and Israel want it to continue and to expand.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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