Ha’aretz misled readers last week to give the impression that an overwhelming majority of Israelis have a favorable impression of President Barack Obama, according to the newspaper’s pollster — a charge the editor denies.
Both the Hebrew and English editions of Ha’aretz led with the March 19 headline “Poll: Most Israelis see Obama as fair, friendly toward Israel.”
Media around the globe followed up with similar articles; the Associated Press, citing three Israeli polls, distributed an article with the headline “Israelis view Obama favorably, mixed on Netanyahu.”
The lead paragraph of the March 19 English edition of Ha’aretz said that “a sweeping majority of Israelis think his treatment of this country is friendly and fair” and included text near a picture of the president saying “69 percent say Obama is fair and friendly.” The story did not have any graphic showing the numbers, either online or in print. Ha’aretz produces a 12-page English edition.
The print and online versions of the newspaper’s Hebrew edition, meanwhile, featured a graphic indicating that just 18 percent of respondents considered Obama “friendly” toward Israel — compared with 21 percent who called the president “hostile” to the Jewish state.
Fifty-one percent chose the Hebrew word “inyani” to describe Obama’s approach to Israel; inyani can be translated as “matter-of-fact” or “businesslike,” but not as fair.
Camil Fuchs, who chairs Tel Aviv University’s statistics department and who conducted the poll, said he heard from people around the world surprised by how the newspaper presented the poll. “What can I do? Only the editor writes the headlines,” Fuchs said.
“When they write the number 69 together, it is correct but misleading,” he added, commenting on how the newspaper combined the 18 percent who said Obama was “friendly” with the 51 percent in the inyani group. “They could just as easily have combined the hostile [21 percent] and inyani [51 percent] categories and gotten a different large number.”
Fuchs was disturbed to hear that the English edition did not include the full distribution of the numbers. He also disagreed with the translation of inyani.
“I definitely would not have translated it as fair,” he said. “They must have a problem with English.”
The story was removed from Ha’aretz’s online print edition archive. A version of the story that remained online was rewritten with no reference to the issue in the original headline. It instead focused on the 27 percent of respondents who said Obama is anti-Semitic.
A Likud source called the original Ha’aretz headline a “trick intended to convince the public to like Obama more and Netanyahu less.”
Ha’aretz English edition editor Charlotte Halle defended her newspaper. “Ha’aretz published a fair and accurate representation of the survey conducted by professor Camil Fuchs at the request of Ha’aretz,” she said. “Any attempt to claim otherwise by another newspaper is false.”
A March 19 Associated Press article reflected Ha’aretz’s report, stating that the survey “showed that seven out of 10 Israelis share a favorable view” of Obama.
That same survey, of 499 people in mid-March, also found that 41 percent of respondents wanted to freeze construction in east Jerusalem during negotiations with the Palestinians, while 48 percent wanted construction to proceed.
Polls taken over the past week by the Geocartographic Institute (for Israel Channel 2’s “Meet the Press” program) and by the Dahaf Institute (for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot) found that a majority of the Israeli public blamed the Obama administration for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.
The Dahaf survey found that 51 percent objected to a freeze and 46 percent supported one, and another survey (by the Maagar Mohot Institute) indicated that 70 percent of Israelis support continued construction, the Associated Press reported.
Other polls sponsored by the Jerusalem Post and the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute have found that Israelis see Obama as significantly more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel.