In a humiliating Tuesday editor’s note, the Washington Post acknowledged its July 29 front-page headline and photo did not provide "adequate context" regarding a Hezbollah attack on Israel that killed 12 children.
Monday’s large-font front-page headline read, "Israel hits targets in Lebanon," with the subheadline, "Strikes against Hezbollah installations muted amid international calls for restraint." The text was positioned directly under a photo of an Israeli family mourning over the coffin of Alma Ayman Fakhr al-Din, 11, one of the 12 children who were killed by a July 27 Hezbollah airstrike on Israeli territory.
"The headline and subline that accompanied a July 29 Page One photo and article about Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon did not provide adequate context," the editor’s note reads. "The headlines should have noted that the Israeli strikes were a response to a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights."
The July 29 page-one design is the latest in a string of public controversies for the Washington, D.C., newspaper, which has been repeatedly scrutinized for its seemingly anti-Israel bias in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
A Washington Free Beacon report found that the Post’s foreign desk employs at least six people who previously wrote for Al Jazeera, the Doha-based news outlet bankrolled in part by Qatar's government and described by an Israeli court as an "intelligence and propaganda arm" for Hamas. The Qatar-backed outlet has used work by Heidi Levine and Niha Masih, two co-authors of the Post’s July 29 article, including Masih's social media posts and Levine’s photos, in multiple of its articles.
Earlier this month, the Post came under fire for sharing and then deleting an X post that shamed an Israeli-American couple for failing to speak "about the ferocity of Israel's counterattack" on Hamas when raising the plight of their imprisoned son.
"Omer Neutra has been missing since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel," the post read. "When his parents speak publicly, they don't talk about Israel's assault on Gaza that has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to local officials. Experts have warned of looming famine."
The post was deleted and replaced with an apology after social media users voiced anger with the paper’s sentiments.
Israeli leaders took to social media on Monday after reading the Post’s July 29 front page, criticizing the outlet's "shameful journalism."
"Even with a photo from the funeral of an Israeli child killed by Hezbollah, the Washington Post chose to frame Israel as the aggressor in the headline," the Embassy of Israel to the United States posted on X. "Shameful journalism."
"That’s an image of a funeral of a girl KILLED IN ISRAEL BY A HEZBOLLAH ROCKET FROM LEBANON, so why is the Washington Post headline backwards?" former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy wrote in an X post.
The headline on the online article now reads, "Israel strikes deep in Lebanon after rocket attack, stoking fear of wider war," with the subheadline, "Israel had promised revenge for a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 in the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams. Hezbollah denied responsibility." The photo is an aerial shot showing the funeral for "10 people killed in a rocket attack from Lebanon."
In addition to the 12 children that were murdered on Saturday, 40 people were injured in the rocket strike, making it the deadliest attack against Israel since the Oct. 7 massacre that started the war in Gaza.