For the second time in a month, The Los Angeles Times degraded an already problematic Associated Press headline. Yesterday’s imperfect Associated Press headline was “Israel strikes Gaza after gunfire wounds civilian near fence.”
The headline can use improvement. AP’s headline presents events in reverse chronological order, starting with Israel’s retaliatory strike on Hamas position, followed by the initial Hamas aggression which had prompted the Israeli response.
The AP’s inconsistency in adequately identifying the subjects is also objectionable. “Israel strikes” is clear: Israel is the actor. “Gunfire wounds” is less clear. Whose gunfire? It’s Hamas’ gunfire, but AP doesn’t say. Why the double standard? Nor does AP’s headline identify the wounded civilian as Israeli.
Editors of The Los Angeles Times’ print edition weren’t content with AP’s less than straightforward headline about Hamas’ violent attack. They further concealed Hamas culpability with the uninformative page-one headline today: “Exchange of fire on Gaza frontier leaves 4 injured.”
This vague formulation completely erases both chronology and causality and entirely obfuscates that the violent events kicked off with Hamas’ shooting attack on an Israeli civilian. (The Los Angeles Times‘ digital article uses AP’s relatively informative headline: “Israel strikes Gaza after gunfire wounds civilian near fence.”)