Electronic Intifada – Bias and Credibility

These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation.  They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Left Bias sources.

• Overall, we rate Electronic Intifada Left biased based on strong pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli bias. We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting, rather than High, due to a lack of transparency regarding funding, as well as strongly loaded emotional wording that may be misleading.

Detailed Report

Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL
Country: USA
World Press Freedom Rank: USA 45/180

History

Founded in 2001, The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a Chicago based publication founded by Ali Abunimah, Arjan El Fassed, Laurie King, and Nigel Parry. EI reports on current news regarding Palestine, primarily the Israeli occupation, and is Pro-Palestinian in its reporting and editorial stance.

Read our profile on United States government and media.

Funded by / Ownership

Electronic Intifada is a nonprofit organization that is funded through donations. However, EI does not publish financial information, reflecting a lack of transparency and accountability.

Analysis / Bias

Electronic Intifada is a news publication and educational resource focusing on Palestine, its people, politics, culture and place in the world. Electronic Intifada has a very strong Pro-Palestinian bias in report choices and does not always cover both sides of the story. There is frequent use of loaded emotional words that are positive for Palestine and negative for Israel. However, Electronic Intifada is generally very well sourced to credible media outlets.

EI has been criticized as promoting extreme views and propaganda against Israel by the NGO Monitor. EI counters that the “NGO Monitor is an extreme right-wing group with close ties to the Israeli government, military, West Bank settlers, a man convicted of misleading the US Congress, and to notoriously Islamophobic individuals and organizations in the United States.”

In reviewing fact checks we could not find any instance where EI directly failed a fact check from major fact checking sources. We did however find a case where EI refuted a pants on fire claim from Politifact that stated the “Baltimore police were trained by Mossad.” In their rebuttle, EI is careful to indicate that Mossad did not directly train the Baltimore Police, however they refute that there are not connections based on the defensive style they were trained in and the fact the police had visited Israel twice for training. In the end, Politifact is correct that it is unproven that Mossad trained the Baltimore Police, but EI makes a compelling, well sourced rebuttal that there are connections to Israel. The issue with this exchange is the misleading headline used by EI: PolitiFact denies Israeli ties to Baltimore police despite evidence. Politifact’s fact check did not ask if there were Israeli ties, it centered purely on Mossad. Based on this misleading headline, I would rate EI as mostly factual in reporting despite the use of excellent sourcing in most articles and left biased based on story selection and wording that sometimes amounts to propaganda such as this: No hope, no future, only revenge.

A factual search reveals they have not formally failed a fact check.

Overall, we rate Electronic Intifada Left biased based on strong pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli bias. We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting, rather than High, due to a lack of transparency regarding funding, as well as strongly loaded emotional wording that may be misleading. (D. Van Zandt 5/13/2016) (D. Kelley 5/8/2017) Updated (11/18/2019)

Source: https://electronicintifada.net/