The media’s role in lying about Amsterdam violence just keeps getting darker

Maccabi thugs in Amsterdam: Better call it a provocation

The media's role in peddling disinformation over last week's violence in Amsterdam just keeps getting darker.

Owen Jones has interviewed a Dutch woman who shot the footage used by major outlets – from Sky News and the BBC to the Guardian and New York Times – to suggest that locals in Amsterdam carried out "antisemitic attacks" on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. In fact, as she has noted on social media, her footage shows the exact reverse: Israeli fans attacking local Dutch residents. 

Despite her efforts to get these outlets to correct their mistake, and issue apologies, none has done so, apart from a German news programme, Taggeschau.

We know that an early report from the scene by Sky News’ reporter was one of the only to correctly describe the video as showing Israeli hooliganism, not antisemitism.

But Sky quickly took down that report, saying it wasn't "balanced". The channel then heavily re-edited the segment and issued a new version that presented the footage – quite wrongly – as evidence of Dutch locals attacking Israeli fans.

That was crucial to shoring up the false “antisemitism” and “pogrom” narratives spread by Western politicians and the establishment media.

Here's where it gets even more disturbing. The Dutch photographer interviewed by Jones says she was interviewed by Sky News about her footage before the second, re-edited report was aired.

In other words, not only was Sky's reporter correct in her first account of the events in Amsterdam, but Sky's news editors back in London knew exactly what the footage showed too – because the Dutch woman who filmed it had told them.

And yet Sky's news team still edited a truthful news report to make it untruthful.

The only conclusion one can draw is that they did so to mislead their audience. They didn't make a mistake. They didn’t act out of ignorance. They knowingly aired disinformation. They intentionally peddled fake news.

That’s something very hard for most of us to accept. It requires a troubling recalibration, a shift of perspective if we are to understand the world we live in. Doing that is the only way to make sense of some of the most significant events that have unfolded over the past two decades.

We know that an early report from the scene by Sky News’ reporter was one of the only to correctly describe the video as showing Israeli hooliganism, not antisemitism.  But Sky quickly took down that report, saying it wasn't "balanced".

Remember the lies we were sold by the Western establishment media about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq to justify a US-UK invasion and get Western troops into a key oil-rich Middle Eastern state in gross violation of international law?

Remember the years of evidence-free claims from the entire British establishment media about the most prominent anti-racist politician of his generation, Jeremy Corbyn, who suddenly was outed as an unhinged antisemite the moment he became leader of the Labour party? Corbyn also just happened to be the first democratic socialist to head the party in 40 years.