Sometimes it's not horse and zebras, but horses and donkeys - both are reasonably plausible. This is generally the case in a war zone, where stuff goes wrong an

Sometimes it's not horse and zebras, but horses and donkeys - both are reasonably plausible. This is generally the case in a war zone, where stuff goes wrong and friendly fire occurs all the time. If a journalist tells me that it's horses I'd hope they've done the leg work and checked that it's not donkeys first. The way that the NYT reported on this isn't technically incorrect or *obviously wrong ("Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say") - they basically said "Hoofbeats from horses, party A says". But it stresses the account rather than the source, despite it being fraught to take claims from either side at face value. All people took in was "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital" despite that claim being far from confirmed. Journalists can absolutely publish what officials with a vested interest say - but if you're going to frame it in a way that suggests that their claims are more than unverified chatter you'd better make sure that the preponderance of evidence supports that claim.