In Crikey today, Sophie Vorrath whinges that Bolt relied on anonymous blogger Zombietime to bebunk the “Israel hits ambulances with missile” story as a hoax — just like I did on the weekend.

Apparently it’s OK for Bolt to rely on an unattributed blog called Zombietime to back his sensational claim – the same source, it seems, upon which the Honourable Alexander Downer based his concern about “evidence of dishonesty in the reporting out of Lebanon” during his speech to the National Newspaper Publishers’ Conference on the Gold Coast on Monday.

The website… claims to prove that the 23 July attack, in which two ambulances were fired upon and six people injured, never happened, using photographs of an interior of one ambulance that apparently show there was not enough damage.

Here’s how I’ve replied to Crikey, which I daresay will be published tomorrow:

Stilgherrian writes: Sophie Vorrath is way keen to attack Andrew Bolt — hey the gods know there’s plenty of reasons you’d want to. But Vorrath misrepresents Zombietime as “claiming to prove” the Israel-shoots-ambulance tale a fake “using photographs of an interior of one ambulance”. Zombietime actually presents a detailed forensic argument over 9000 words — starting with the supposed “missile hole” sitting right where other ambulances have a ventilator. Zombietime’s story certainly fits the facts better than any claim of “missile attack”. Why have a go at Bolt (or Alexander Downer) just because we don’t know who the messenger is?

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The incident would have been an indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention, and would constitute a war crime committed by Israel. But it never happened.

Bloggers have systematically debunked the story, explaining it as a hoax set up by Hezbollah to discredit Israel.

• Michelle Malkin has posted a summary with photographs.
• “Internet documentarian” and photojournalist Zombie has posted a detailed analysis.

Zombie speculates how this hoax became news and why the story still has legs:

Why did the media swallow the story hook, line and sinker? In their zeal to bash Israel, did they allow themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to be duped by Hezbollah supporters into broadcasting propaganda as news? Or is the media so eager to jump on any fresh scandal that they simply switch off their critical thinking and become absolutely credulous of any juicy tale thrown their way?

Well, I don’t see the US-dominated news media having “zeal to ban Israel”!

No, the real reason is that the news is a massively competitive business. If you’ve got a hot story with pictures then you’d better run it, despite any doubts — otherwise the competitors will run it and your bosses will be asking why you’ve missed the big headline.

And there’s no need to correct yourself afterwards. Unless you’ve got a basic fact wrong — sorry, John Howard wasn’t assassinated after all — then the media’s goldfish-like attention span will have moved on. Why draw attention to a mistake?

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