Arabic- and Farsi-language news outlets began Wednesday with the same basic facts: a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv suddenly lost thousands of feet, transmitted emergency codes and diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
After that, the accounts began to diverge.
Al-Bayan, a Dubai-based Arabic-language daily published by Dubai Media Incorporated, and Akhbaar24, a Saudi digital news outlet owned by the Riyadh-based Saudi Research and Media Group, stayed close to airline and airport statements. Doha-based Al Jazeera, the Qatar-funded international news network, reconstructed the aircraft’s movements from flight-tracking data. The London-based pan-Arab newspaper and news site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed gave considerable prominence to Israel’s security response. Tehran-based Mehr News Agency and the Iranian news website Tabnak leaned heavily on Israeli and regional reporting, while Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency introduced a far more serious allegation involving a supposed Israeli false-flag operation.
Within hours, the same flight was being presented as an aviation emergency, an Israeli security crisis, a suspected terror attack and, in some Iranian coverage, part of the confrontation between Israel and Iran.
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