'Negligent' journalists will have credentials revoked, says Israel

We're all guilty of posting those angry Facebook outbursts when our passions get away with us. We may regret what we say. We may not really mean it all that much anyway.

But when it is the head of Israel's Government Press Office posting enraged threats to revoke the press credentials of journalists, as he did this week, his outburst may carry some clout.

Responding to a number of stories by foreign news agencies that he thought seemed to be sympathising with Palestinian militants, the press office's head, Nitzan Chen, threatened to take such action against members of the media who, "are derelict in their jobs and write headlines that are the opposite of what happened".

Chen's outburst followed a reported back-and-forth between the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Government Press Office and National Information Directorate - and CBS News.

The US broadcaster's website had published a headline about an attack at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate that read: "3 Palestinians killed as daily violence grinds on".

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This provoked the ire of Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachson, who described the report as an example of "unparalleled chutzpah".

CBS were then apparently persuaded to change the headline to: "Israeli police kill 3 alleged Palestinian attackers". The frequently displeased Nachson again criticised the revision as "not ideal, but better".

Following this, the headline underwent a second change: "Palestinians kill Israeli officer, wound another before being killed" - a headline that only just about leaves enough information for a brief news article.

Such moves do not bode well for a country that was ranked 96 in the World Press Freedom Index last year, but nonetheless is in line with previous actions taken by Israel's Foreign Ministry.

In 2014, a CNN ticker read: "4 Israelis, 2 Palestinians dead in Jerusalem. The US news broadcaster came under fire for allegedly failing to identify the Palestinians as "terrorists".

An apology by CNN duly followed, with the Foreign Ministry issuing a directive that called upon its international delegations to complain to media outlets who were thought to be distorting facts about any incident.

These protests were reportedly also influential in persuading French daily Le Monde to change their headline "Six killed in Jerusalem", to one that reflected that two of the six were "Palestinian attackers".

It may be agreed that lumping together attackers and victims does not fully tell a story for what it is, however the vitriol and threats dished out by Chen on his Facebook page were perhaps overstepping the mark.

Unless of course, the Foreign Ministry says otherwise.