On January 10, CBC News.ca published an Associated Press article with a terribly misleading and unfair headline that wrongly portrayed Israeli soldiers as having killed an innocent Palestinian man.

The headline stated the following: “Israeli troops kill Palestinian in West Bank raid”.

In truth, Israeli soldiers were on an arrest raid in the west bank and the Palestinian had attacked the soldiers with a knife. HonestReporting Canada conveyed to CBC editors in a complaint yesterday that their article’s headline should refer to the Palestinian as an “attacker” considering that Israel claims he tried to stab their soldiers, even if the headline is in attribution. Failing which, readers who only saw the headline could wrongly conclude that Israeli troops killed an innocent Palestinian during a west bank arrest raid to detain wanted terrorists. We conveyed that people read headlines 3:1 over the adjacent article – so context in headlines is vital.

Following our complaint, CBC amended this headline to mention that the Israeli “military say he was armed”.

Here’s a before and after: