OPINION: Simpson, Cadwalladr, Crawford – how the world’s top reporters regurgitated mindless nonsense

It is no exaggeration to say that John Simpson is one of the most prestigious journalists in the world. He is one of the pillars of the BBC, where he has worked for more than half a century, with 37 years as its world affairs editor. He has reported from some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. His measured sentences and calm demeanour, even when under fire, earned him international recognition and respect. Which is why it is so depressing to see him sharing a falsehood on social media which a student could pick apart on their first day of journalism school.

Yesterday, the veteran correspondent published the following claim: “According to the Watson School of International and Public Affairs in Rhode Island, more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam war, the wars in Yugoslavia and the war in Afghanistan combined.”

Simpson is not wrong that the “Watson School of International and Public Affairs” has claimed this. What is obviously and overwhelmingly wrong is the claim itself.

A look at the report from this school shows the claim that fewer than 70 journalists were killed during World War Two, for example. If that sounds ludicrous, that because it is. The claim has been thoroughly dissected online – it appears that it is based on the Freedom Forum’s memorial to journalists who died in the war, which lists 67 journalists. Nowhere does that memorial claim that those were the only journalists who were killed in World War Two. Yet this school has taken this figure and launched it into the wider world as fact.

You don’t need to be the brains of Britain to question the logic of the statement shared by Simpson. More than 100 million people died in all the wars that the school named, while figures from Hamas itself claim that some 63,000 people have died in Gaza. To believe that 100 million dead people contained fewer journalists than 63,000 dead people is to have suspended ones’ sense of reality.

You can go onto the Yad Vashem website, right now, and find out how many Jewish journalists alone were killed by the Nazis. The figure, from 1933-1945, is more than 1,400 – more than five times the number of those named as journalists who have been reported killed in Gaza. Most of them, of course, were killed during World War Two itself. That, of course, does not include the Soviet, British, American, Commonwealth and many other journalists who would have died in that conflict.

Simpson is not the only one to have shared this blatant misinformation. Carole Cadwalladr rose to international fame due to her targeting of what she termed the “right-wing fake news ecosystem”. Apparently she found herself susceptible to sharing fake news of the left-wing kind. Amnesty International, a once widely admired organisation which has sadly sunk into the depths of crankery, published an infographic today repeating the false numbers. Alex Crawford, special correspondent for Sky who has been at the channel since it launched, similarly decided to share the “research” from the Watson School with her 138,000+ followers on Twitter back in June.

There are two types of people who share this sort of content. There are those who want to portray Israel’s war in Gaza as the most uniquely evil act on earth, and there are those who don’t care enough to use their faculties for the tiny amount of time which would allow them to realise that a claim is fake.

We saw a similar example earlier this year, when a senior UN chief said that around 14,000 babies would die in Gaza within the next 48 hours if held did not reach them. The news was breathlessly reported around the world, when anyone with more than a handful of brain cells could see it was a grotesque falsehood. And when it was revealed as such, the world collectively shrugged its shoulders.

The devastating power of propaganda such as this, mindlessly shared by some of the most respected journalistic voices on the planet, comes not only from such originally, breathtakingly dishonest claims, but from the knowledge that anyone who chooses to directly grapple with their false nature has already lost. Try it for yourself and see. Point out that no, this is a lie, that Gaza has not seen the most journalists killed than some of the world’s most gruesome conflicts combined, and the inevitable response is:  “So you’re saying it’s OK because only 250 journalists have died? You absolute ghoul.” In other words, the stock response is that if something is bad, how can you quibble as to exactly how bad it is? But that way lies madness, and a complete erosion of the concept of basic verification. To go in that direction is to suggest that journalists have no need to stick to facts when they can cite emotional assertions built on quicksand.

Likewise, another way to answer the falsehoods is a similar propaganda trap. “Jews were killed in World War Two because they were Jews, not because they were journalists”, comes the response to you – which is true, although it sidesteps the original claim, which said nothing about why journalists were killed, only that they were killed. But regardless, you begin to answer by saying that similarly in Gaza, many people identified as journalists were killed without the IDF specifically knowing they were journalists. By doing so, of course, you then effortlessly fall into the trap response of “oh, so they were killed for no reason at all, then”, as well as having been tricked into comparing the IDF’s conduct with that of the Nazis.

There will be no comeuppance for spreading such claims. The journalists in question will no doubt claim that they were only sharing a report published by someone else – ducking the question as to why they would unhesitatingly promote something so obviously untrue. Their original social media posts will be seen by millions, while this piece will be read by a mere fraction of that number. But at least the few who see this will know the truth – a truth that some of the most respected journalists in the world were not bothered to research for themselves, and therefore will not tell you.