Honest Reporting - Criticism

Criticism

HonestReporting has been accused by some of making inaccurate, distorted or deceptive claims. George Beres, writer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, accused HonestReporting of not displaying enough of what he considers to be misdeeds on Israel's side.

The American Journalism Review described the organisation as a "pro-Israeli pressure group". It accused HonestReporting of omitting parts of their reports to suit an agenda.

After being criticized by HonestReporting for an article published by The Independent, author Robert Fisk wrote in the Independent that some of their readers engaged in hate-mail against writers whose point of view they dislike, based on erroneous information. HonestReporting has in turn accused The Independent of intentionally omitting a part of their report.

Following a 2004 article published in the British Medical Journal which criticised Israel for a high level of Palestinian civilian casualties and claimed that the pattern of injuries suggested routine targeting of children in situations of minimal or no threat, the journal received over 500 responses to its website and nearly 1,000 sent directly to its editor. In an analysis of the responses published in the journal, Karl Sabbagh concluded that the correspondence was orchestrated by Honest Reporting and aimed at silencing legitimate criticism of Israel. In his analysis Sabbagh pointed to evidence that that the correspondents had not read the article. Sabbagh also documented a significant proportion of offensive, abusive and racist insults among the correspondence. An editorial by the BMJ referred to the campaign as bullying and said that the best way to counter such behaviour was to expose it to public scrutiny. Daniel Finkelstein, associate editor of The Times, which itself has been deemed by critics as biased in Israel's favour, responded that Sabbagh's piece was "anti-Israel propaganda" that did not meet even "basic academic standards" of scientific analysis.