Israeli weapons in Libya? Andy Carvin and his Twitter followers debunk sloppy reporting, tweet by tweet

Xeni Jardin 9:12 am Sat Apr 2, 2011

NPR's Andy Carvin has become the go-to-guy on Twitter for evolving, conversational, investigative reporting on breaking news in the mideast—140 characters at a time.

He has published a fascinating item on storify about the process of digging into reports from various news organizations claiming evidence of Israeli munitions being used in Libya.

"My Twitter followers and I investigated the claims and ultimately debunked them," says Andy. "Here's the story of how we did it and the evidence we found along the way."

Andy writes that it all started with this photograph posted on the Facebook page for Al Manara, a popular Libyan expat news service based in the UK.

Headlined "Israeli industry against the Libyan people," the photo shows what some type of mortar shell with what appears to be a Star Of David on it, as well as some form of crescent-like symbol. Al Manara assumed the Star Of David meant it was manufactured by Israel, and claimed as such in the headline.

"Israeli weapons In Libya? How @acarvin and his Twitter followers debunked sloppy journalism" (storify)

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