Associated Press Slammed for Headline Calling Anti-Semitic Lynch Mob in Russia an Anti-Israel ‘Protest’

The Associated Press sparked a backlash on social media Sunday as critics slammed its initial headline reporting on an anti-Semitic mob in Russia that was looking for Jews at an airport after they had heard a flight landed from Tel Aviv.

A conservative commentator, who goes by “AG” online, tweeted out the initial headline from AP which read, “Crowd storms Russian airport to protest flight from Israel.” AG added, “WTF kind of description is this, @AP? You have a blood thirsty mob checking for passports and searching for Jews, and you describe it as ‘a protest’?”

“A mob in the same exact place flooded a hotel yesterday to check the rooms for Jews. What were they protesting? They are trying to lynch Jews and the absolute imbeciles at the AP are framing it like a sit-in protest. Just despicable,” he added.

“If only there was a more accurate word for this type of behavior!” replied data guru Nate Silver with a screenshot of the definition for “riot.” CNN’s Dana Bash covered the event on Sunday and while not referring to the AP article directly, she noted that some had called the mob a “protest” it was most certainly “not an anti-war protest, it was an antisemitic hunt for Jews.”

Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former economic minister in Ukraine, noted that AP did change the headline within a few hours to, “Hundreds storm airport in Russia in antisemitic riot.”

“AP called an anti semitic riot with a clear goal to attack Jewish people – a protest of a flight. They were not protesting any flight – they wanted to attack and lynch people coming from Israel Although the AP has corrected the headline (thank you!), other US media followed,” Mylovanov wrote.

Other media outlets, like Politico, ran the AP wire with the original headline and did not end up updating as AP did. A spokesperson for the AP made clear that they updated their headline as more information became available and the situation on the ground became more clear.

The current version of the story is now titled, “Putin claims Ukraine, US spy agencies were behind mob storming Dagestan airport looking for Israelis.”

Here are some additional reactions to the original headline:

__