Lazy Reporting

What’s wrong with these two sentences?

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Monday he has ceased trying to schedule a summit with his Israeli counterpart aimed at restarting peace talks, amid continuing bloodshed in the 39-month-long conflict.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon prepared to face off against hard-line members of his Likud Party angered by his plan to remove some settlements and unilaterally impose a boundary on the Palestinians if peace efforts do not bear fruit.

The lede sentence makes it sound as if the Palestinians won’t talk, because the Israelis are to blame for the West Bank terror campaign. The second sentence belies that implication, as Sharon attempts to remove one of the worst “root causes” of Palestinian anger.

Now, I can’t say whether the AP reporter who wrote this story has some sort of pro-Palestinian bias. But I can tell you with complete confidence, that he wrote his lede straight out of some PA press release.

And then he couldn’t be bothered to check if his lede matched the facts.