Israel Matzav

Name and shame: Financial Times reporter tweets 'Israel bribed Bulgaria,' later apologizes

Borzou Daragahi, the Middle East and North Africa correspondent for the Financial Times of London, has now apologized for a tweet on Tuesday that implied that Israel had bribed Bulgaria to implicate Hezbullah in the Burgas terror attack.

“Sincere apologies and regret for ill-conceived tweet yesterday about Israel and Bulgaria,” Borzou Daragahi, the London-based newspaper’s Middle East and North Africa correspondent, wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

The previous day Daragahi had tweeted, “I don’t doubt Hezbollah/Iran could be behind Bulgaria bombing, but also think Israel could pay Sofia to say anything.” He included a URL of a Reuters article quoting Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov as blaming two Hezbollah operatives for the July 18 bus bombing in Burgas in which six people were killed, including five Israeli tourists.

Not quite as bad an instance as I expected of the correction getting far less publicity than the original. The original tweet was retweeted 15 times and favorited four times, while the correction was retweeted 10 times and favorited once. But Mr. Daragahi has over 13,000 followers. And as one commenter pointed out in the correction, the tweet just might be indicative of Mr. Daragahi's biases.

Sounds like he should at least have been transferred.

Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Bulgaria, Hezbullah, Islamic terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:35 AM