PrintJanuary 29, 2008
Each Gazan eats a half a ton of flour daily?
Does the reported financial crunch of the MSM media mean that fact checkers--or even sharp eyed copy editors--have been increasingly let go? Well, perhaps the Boston Globe can use that pathetic excuse to explain this wild error.
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
Ooooh, those cruel Israelis, reducing the amount of flour to those Gazans to a few grains, starving them. Except, of course,
You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.
Apparently the Boston Globe trusted the veracity of the authors, all of whom are obviously not math geniuses but obviously anti Israel propagandists.
The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent."
Did these grossly erroneous figures slide by the Globe's editors because it further reinforced their skewed reporting on the Gazan situation? Or, in a fit of political correctness, were the editors unwilling to challenge the educated Moslem authors?
Just asking.
