I consulted with Kevin Osterloh, an historian at the Miami University (Ohio) who is an expert on Hebrew. He said that Channel 2's on-air correspondent, in rendering Ahmadinejad's remarks in Hebrew, had put them in the present tense, saying, roughly, "We are sustaining specific blows from the enemy, but... we are also successfully landing blows of our own; sometimes the blows which we land are even more forceful than their blows." Osterloh said this needn't be considered a dramatic departure from the future tense; you might think of it as "present progressive-ish," he said, because "one can use the present tense in a general way to mean 'the way that we are wont to do things,' etc., and this nuance in fact makes more sense within the context of a threat."

OK, so Channel 2's on-air correspondent didn't do the lion's share of the tense shifting. However, the Channel 2 website also ran a printed excerpt from Ahmadinejad's speech, also in Hebrew, which did clearly change the tense of the remarks, moving the action into the past. It's this version of the remarks that the Times of Israel apparently translated from Hebrew to English, and that appeared in Gabe Fisher's story. (Osterloh independently translated the Hebrew to English and came up with a translation closely corresponding to Fisher's. Thus where Fisher wrote that Iran's enemies "have been rewarded with a far stronger response," Osterloh wrote that Iran's enemies "have earned in response a much more forceful counter-blow.")

Did Fisher listen to the Channel 2 broadcast, in which the translation is closer to accurate? Or did he just take the text from the Channel 2 website without clicking on the video player? I don't know. (I've emailed The Times of Israel, asking that this question be relayed to Fisher, whose coordinates I can't find. No reply yet.) But it would certainly be consistent with human nature--and an example of confirmation bias--to encounter both translations and, rather than wonder at the discrepancy and investigate it, go with the version more consistent with your pre-existing beliefs. To facilitate this choice, a rationale for doubting the accuracy of the less convenient translation might bubble up unbidden from your unconscious mind.

If this was indeed a case of confirmation bias, that doesn't mean that Fisher himself harbors dark suspicions about Ahmadinejad. In his capacity as a journalist he has a vested interest in Ahmadinejad's remarks being newsworthy. So it would be natural for him to enter the "research" process with a working hypothesis that he's emotionally attached to. Hence a form of confirmation bias that confronts all journalists, and I don't think any of us can honestly claim we always surmount it. Certainly I can't.

Note how this journalistic tendency can pave the way for war. When you've got Israeli readers who will click on stories about Ahmadinejad's "gloating," and American readers who will do the same, and Iranian readers who will click on stories about the malicious intent of America and Israel, then the natural workings of journalism will reinforce and amplify preexisting incendiary beliefs (though in Iran, of course, the press is less free and more subject to government influence, which brings problems of its own). So confirmation bias enters the system at two points. It motivates some readers to click on certain kinds of stories, and it encourages journalists to produce those kinds of stories even if they're misleading--and journalists don't even have to be bothered by conscious awareness of how they've abetted untruth!