🧵🚨1/ This is nuts. After mysteriously deleting a package covering the Amsterdam protests, Sky News have put up a new version. The new version completely changes the thrust to emphasise that the violence was antisemitic. See the opening screenshot change below
2/Even the tweet accompanying the video has changed. It has explicitly shifted from mentioning anti-Arab slogans to removing the phrase "anti-Arab" and using antisemitism. It also removes mention of vandalism by Israeli fans. An extremely clear editorial shift!
3/ They have also inserted into the video, right after the opening footage of Dutch Prime Minister condemning antisemitsm. This was not in the original video.
4/In the new video they've also added an impact narrative /vox pops but ONLY from a maccabi fan - not an Amsterdam resident. In it he says the attacks reminded him of October 7th....Nothing from the "other side"
5/ As if it couldn't get any worse - the original report ends with the reporter saying that while politicians had called it a pogrom, "their statements failed to mention the assaults by Israeli hooligans against Dutch citizens" . This bit was DELETED. I've included it below
This was Sky News' justification. I should add that while the new video does include examples of Maccabi violence - the overall edit is blatantly designed to downplay anti-Arab violence (as i hope this thread has shown)
nb: Here are both videos for posterity
Here's my write up of what preceded this Sky News debacle in the media #Amsterdam
Update: The voiceover over @iAnnetnl 's footage was changed to anonymise Maccabi violence. It has changed from 'Maccabi hooligans chasing people down a street’, to 'a group of hooded men can be seen chasing people down a street'.
🧵1/ I analysed the headline and lead paragraph of 536 English news articles including the terms "Maccabi" + "Amsterdam" and classified them using Claude 3.5 Sonnet to determine how many framed Israelis as victims or non-Israelis as primary victims (as well as both).
2/ The results are fairly striking. 65% of articles frame Israelis as the victim, while only 5% frame Non-Israelis as victims. 24% are neutral while 9% framed both groups as victims. Quite clear the media emphasised violence as anti-Israeli and antisemitic, especially early on
3/ There isn't much evidence too of corrective framing at this point, although a small increase in neutral framing a week after the incident. Israeli victimhood was categorised as emphasis of violence initiated by non-Israelis, and focus on anti-Israeli or antisemitic violence
🧵 1/ Part of understanding what is going on in Amsterdam is also to understand the coordinated anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaigns run with huge amounts of money targeting Europe. Here's a short private Eye article about an investigation I did with @SohanDsouza
2/ Here's a write-up by @karamballes on the campaign in @BylineTimes "Disinformation Campaign on Social Media Reached More Than 40 Million People – but Meta ‘Alarmingly’ Hasn't Revealed the Culprits' bylinetimes.com/2024/08/30/qat…
@karamballes @BylineTimes 3/ ...How a covert influence campaign helped Europe’s far right
Our findings about the shadowy multi-platform operation attacking Qatar and stoking Islamophobia to further its far-right agenda in Europe and beyond call for immediate action. aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/…
1/ If you break down the BBC's live reporting of what happened in Amsterdam, you can see the disproportionate attention it pays to Maccabi fans and Israelis as victims, with far less attention paid to the actions of Maccabi fans. Here are the sources interviewed.
2/ In terms of mentions of Arab, Dutch or other Ajax fans, there is very little emphasis on Arab safety, with the majority of coverage focused on Maccabi fans as victims. There are vox pops with fans, but very little interaction with non-Maccabi people.
3/ The language used to describe the attacks on the Maccabi fans is also much stronger, ranging from pogroms to brutal and shocking. Similar terms aren't use for the anti-Arab racism.
🚨1/ This New York Times piece is wild. Let's go through it.
Firstly, the lede is an emphasis that attacks in Amsterdam were based on antisemitism, yet it cites no evidence of this, but DOES cite evidence of anti-Arab chants.
2/ The claims of antisemitism are based primarily on the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who tweeted that the attacks were antisemitic. Note - the Dutch Prime Minister didn't call out anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian racism from Maccabi fans.
3/ The piece links to an Amsterdam police statement to talk about the violence - although the police statement doesn't mention anything about antisemitism.
🧵 'At least 1,800 bots on the social media site X are promoting the controversial choice of Azerbaijan, a major oil and gas producer, to host next month’s ...#COP29, according to a new analysis shared exclusively with The Washington Post".
2/ The analysis by Marc Owen Jones, an expert on disinformation at @NUQatar, focused on roughly 2,800 X accounts that collectively sent around 10,800 tweets, retweets and replies about the conference between Oct. 17 and Oct. 24.
3/ Detection
73% of all accounts active in sample created in the space of 3 quarters in 2024.
Conservative estimates suggest 66% (1876) accounts in the sample are fake (bots) based on activity over the past week
🧵1/ There is a dis/misinfo campaign targeting Ariane Tabatabai, a deputy assistant secretary within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. On 22 Oct, Sky News Arabia said a Pentagon official told them that Tabatabai leaked information about Israel's planned attack on Iran.
2/ There is no evidence to substantiate this. Even the Pentagon have denied it. @jengriffinfnc from Fox News followed up with Tabatabai who, contrary to reports, was at work as usual. The Pentagon denied that the information reported by Sky News Arabia was true.
4/ Despite this, dozens of outlets have published this story, but the soul basis of their story is the Sky News Arabia report. Here's just a selection of those outlets - @dwnews @ynetnews @Jerusalem_Post @firstpost @IranIntl_En @News18India