After lying about terror victims, CNN apologizes

Christiane Amanpour apologizes more than a month after falsely implying that British-Israeli women, who were murdered at point blank range by terrorists, were armed and had been exchanging fire with their killers.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

More than a month after veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour falsely stated that Lucy Dee and her two daughters were killed “in a shoot-out,” the award-winning reporter formally apologized for implying that the women had been armed when they were murdered.

“On April 10, I referred to the murders of an Israeli family: Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee, the wife and daughters of Rabbi Leo Dee. I misspoke and said they were killed in a ‘shoot-out’ instead of a shooting,” Amanpour said in an on-air apology broadcast on May 22.

“I have written to Rabbi Leo Dee to apologize and make sure that he knows that we apologize for any further pain that may have caused him.”

Notably, Amanpour’s apology failed to acknowledge that the women had been killed in a terror attack, nor did it refer to the perpetrators of the murders or their ideology.

Last month, pro-Israel advocacy group HonestReporting posted a clip on their Twitter account of Amanpour discussing the murders of the three women on TV. Lucy Dee and her daughters Maiy and Rina were shot to death in their car at point blank range by terrorists in an unprovoked attack.

But when Amanpour described the attack, she said that they were “killed in a shoot-out,” implying that the British-Israeli women were armed and defending themselves in an exchange of fire with the terrorists.

“A shoot-out is two sides firing at each other,” HonestReporting posted as a caption to the clip. “A mother and her two daughters were shot at close range by Palestinian terrorists.”

Addressing Amanpour, they wrote that “you owe a grieving family an apology.”

Rabbi Leo Dee, the widower and father of the victims, was outraged by Amanpour’s characterization of the murders.

“This is the perfect example of ‘terror journalism’ where you have a moral equivalence between the terrorist and victim,” Dee said in a media statement.

“This type of journalism perpetuates the conflict in the Middle East. The real cycle of violence is a comment like this followed by a terrorist atrocity and then more of the same.”