People around the world trust them, like OP over here. They have a responsibility to do even basic verification work before posting something that they know will ignite riots around the world. The IDF seems very open about the strikes they make, were they reached out to for comment? Should the reporter have thought to themselves, "hey, does it make sense that Israel would bomb a hospital packed with civilians right as the US president is about to visit? Would Israel so blatantly destroy the relatively high global goodwill and backing they currently have? What do they have to gain?" It makes no sense if you think about it for half a second, yet these "reputable news sources" sent push notifications to millions of people to spew a complete lie form Hamas when THEY HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ACTUAL EVENT SINCE IT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
Yes. The very first articles say the IDF hadn't yet commented. Later articles included their comments. "Later," in this case, means "one hour later".
>hey, does it make sense that Israel would bomb a hospital packed with civilians right as the US president is about to visit? Would Israel so blatantly destroy the relatively high global goodwill and backing they currently have? What do they have to gain?
Israeli bombardment has hit hospitals before.
Israeli damaged hospitals in 2021, perhaps unintentionally.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/17/israeli-strike...
This is a stub of an article and the origin of the claims isn't clear to me, but it seems Israeli artillery hit the very same hospital we're discussing on the 14th.
https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/news/news-and-stateme...
In the 2014 war Israel admitted to deliberately attacking a hospital, claiming that it contained a weapons cache.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/21/world/meast/gaza-hospital-att...
It is not, on its face, implausible that Israel would attack a hospital. It is also quite plausible that they would hit a hospital by mistake. They have done both of these things before.
>THEY HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ACTUAL EVENT SINCE IT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
The event happened. There was an explosion at a hospital that killed hundreds of people. This is not in dispute.
There is no evidence that hundreds of people were killed. The EU believes the death toll to be between 10-50.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/world/middleeast/gaza-hos...
I can't find the EU number, but I'll take your word for it.
It's entirely possible the death toll is lower. I don't claim that we know anything for certain.
Looking at the crater left behind by the missile and the damage radius I find it very hard to believe that hundreds of people died.
Yes, I'm sure they verified exactly what Palestinian officials said. What they didn't verify (and what the articles were not about) is if the "facts" the Palestinian officials gave them were correct or not. The articles are not investigative articles that strive to report only the truth and facts, but more informal articles that gives you what various people had said.
In the text it was less clear, but the damage was done. I lost all respect for Reuters because of this.
I know, because I was arguing on Reddit(person has since deleted their comments, because they were spreading FAKE NEWS) while it was happening.
If I recall those headlines correctly, they all included with "said Palestinian officials" or similar, which makes the reporting factual no matter who actually bombed the hospital. They were reporting on official statements, not making claims about what happened.
Similar things happen all the time. "State department officials say X" and similar isn't AP or Reuters making claims about X being true or not, they're just reporting statements.