As Israellycool and Yair Rosenberg recently revealed, a myth was reported as news by the tabloids Page Six and Daily Mail on Sept. 26th regarding the reception received by Israel’s prime minister while attending a play in NYC. Both publications claimed that Netanyahu was “booed” as he took his seat for a performance of “Hamilton” on Saturday night at Richard Rodgers Theatre.
Here’s the (original) Daily Mail headline and strapline:
The (original) article begins thusly:
However, while two people attending the performance may have screamed “free Palestine”, as you can see by this video (originally posted by Israellycool) of Netanyahu taking his seat, the Daily Mail got the story wrong.
The article didn’t mention a thing about the ovation.
We contacted Daily Mail editors to complain, and forwarded them the video of the cheering crowd.
They responded promptly. Though they refused to change the grossly misleading headline, they did agree to add an additional bullet point to the strapline and new text to the story to note the ovation.
Here’s the new bullet point in the strap line:
More importantly, here’s the new opening to the article:
Further in the article, they added this, noting a Facebook post by the prime minister in which he mentions the positive reception he received at the NYC show.
Though we’re of course pleased that editors made these changes, the story is still extremely misleading as the (still unrevised) headline represents pretty much the opposite of the truth.