The Gaza Explosion: How Newsroom Leaders Viewed the Story and Implications for the Journalism’s Biggest Breaking News
There was a terrible explosion moments later. The ministry of health in Gaza said hundreds were killed.
Israel subsequently denied being at fault and blamed an errant rocket launch by the Palestinian faction group Islamic Jihad, which has in turn denied responsibility. The rocket comes from Palestinian fighter positions according to the evidence provided by American and other international officials.
The Times continued to update its coverage as more information became available, reporting the disputed claims of responsibility and noting that the death toll might be lower than initially reported. The headline and other text on the top of the website reflected the scope of the explosion and the dispute over responsibility.
Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified. Newsroom leaders continue to examine procedures around the biggest breaking news events — including for the use of the largest headlines in the digital report — to determine what additional safeguards may be warranted.
“I don’t think the question will ever get fully resolved using open source intelligence,” says Andres Gannon, an assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University.
A Palestinian Attack at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital – The Case for a War Zone in the Middle East and the U.N.
Hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering in the courtyard of Al Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday, believing the Christian-run facility would be a safe haven.
Just before 7 p.m. local time, militants began firing a barrage of rockets from a site west of the hospital, according to independent footage of the event.
The visual evidence does not support a standard Israeli airstrike, according to many experts. Large craters are created from those strikes because they spread shrapnel over large areas. Hamas has said they have yet to find physical evidence at the site, which investigators say would normally be there.
There’s a sound in the video that’s close to the blast. That sound is marked by the Doppler effect, which can be heard in the rise and fall in pitch as something moves toward an observer and then away from them.
An nongovernmental organization called Earshot, which conducts “sonic investigations,” analyzed that sound. Earshot found that the fall most likely came from the east.
Lawrence Abuhamdan, director of Earshot, says this is decreasing the probability of this coming from the west. “It’s rocket science after all, so we can’t rule it out.”
Others say that the public evidence isn’t likely to give a definitive answer. The incident happened at night in a war zone and the available video just might not be enough according to a former UN war crimes investigator.
He says he understands why people are concerned about it. Since that incident, there has been a lot of people killed.
He hopes the U.N. can eventually conduct a war crimes investigation to establish who was behind the explosion. For now, other issues are in urgent need of public attention, he says. Hospitals are out of fuel, the UN facilities are being hit and there’s a lot to worry about.