MSNBC slammed for error-riddled map in segment on Israel's borders

The 24-hour news network used a map commonly used by Palestinian propaganda groups.

OCTOBER 18, 2015 18:06

Updated: OCTOBER 26, 2015 13:50

MSNBC slammed for using Palestinian propaganda map in news segment

MSNBC has faced criticism recently for its coverage of the wave of terror attacks in Israel in the past month and their latest gaffe didn't help.

The news station was most recently slammed following a segment featuring Martin Fletcher, MSNBC’s “Middle East expert,” who showed a map claiming to show the progression of Israeli "occupation," starting with the state's 1946 borders, to the 1967 borders and finally to present-day borders.

“I must say it’s pretty shocking when you present it this way," Fletcher said. "What it clearly shows is that if there’s no peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel, more of those green areas, more of that Palestinian land will be eaten up by Jewish settlements."

"Although right now there is a freeze on settlements by Israel because there’s so much international pressure, the Palestinians say 'If we don’t have peace soon we won’t have a Palestine left.'” So what was wrong with the map?

It is a piece of inaccurate Palestinian propaganda. It claimed that in 1946, present-day Israel was under Palestinian rule, leaving out the fact that it was under British Mandatory rule until May 14, 1948, when the British Mandate came to an end.

Another mistake came in the 1947 map which the graphic referred to as the "UN plan." This was inaccurate for the fact that the supposed 1947 borders never existed, since the UN's partition plan was rejected by all Arab countries.

In the map showing the 1967 borders, a further mistake was made. Though MSNBC's graphic labeled the green area as "Palestinian land," in 1967, the West Bank belonged to Jordan, while the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian rule.

Luckily for Israel, however, the well informed quickly caught the mistake.

Facebook users lambasted the segment as “absurdly stupid” and fictitious. One particular user named Daniel Laufer tagged both Fletcher and his co-host Kate Snow in a post expressing his disbelief that the two anchors didn’t know better than to realize that the map was blatant propaganda.

Fletcher saw the post and issued an apology in the comment section, writing “Daniel, you're right. I should have corrected the first map, which I didn't see until I was on air. No excuses."

MSNBC right back at "reporting" MidEast fiction:Kate Snow & Martin Fletcher air blatantly false map series produced by...
Posted by Daniel Laufer on Saturday, October 17, 2015

One online critic took the time to personally correct the lies shown in the news report.

A user-created graphic explaining the inaccuracies in the MSNBC report.

A Twitter user by the name Sliv_the_eli wrote that “Apparently the MS in MSNBC stands for ‘making stuff-up’ #PropagandaNotJournalism #WordsKill.”

@cerenomri @MSNBC Apparently the "MS" in MSNBC stands for "Making Stuff-up" #PropagandaNotJournalism #WordsKill
— Sliv_the_eli (@sliv_the_eli) October 16, 2015