The New York Times continues to set new records of dishonesty in its coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
First, instead of starting to correct its questionable reports on sexual violence during the October 7 Hamas attack, the paper is conducting an internal witch hunt, one that targets its Middle Eastern and Muslim employees, to track down the sources of leaks about the scandal. Second, the Times continues to blame the Gazan victims for the February 29 Flour Massacre, in which Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd of hungry Palestinians, killing more than 100 people and wounding another 700.
The Intercept continues its valuable reporting on the Times’s botched coverage of the sexual violence. It used internal sources at the paper, and also translated a podcast in Hebrew from Anat Schwartz, one of the “reporters” on the widely-circulated stories, in a long report that raised even more doubts about the truth. We already knew that two of the three bylines on the Times’s reports belonged to Israelis with no experience in journalism, one of whom had already revealed vicious anti-Palestinian bias on social media.
“We demand that The Times cease what has become a destructive and racially targeted witch hunt.”
NewsGuild of New York president Susan DeCarava
Instead of taking action to fix the problem, the paper launched an internal witch hunt to find the leakers. The Times’s union president fought back, charging that the investigation targeted particular employees with Middle Eastern or North African backgrounds “for their national origin, ethnicity and race.” Union president Susan DeCarava said: “We demand that The Times cease what has become a destructive and racially targeted witch hunt.”
The Times has a simple solution at its disposal. It needs to assign real reporters to do the sexual violence stories all over again. At this point, it appears the paper sees no reason to do so. Speaking of the heavily criticized report, Times International Editor Phil Pan told The Intercept, “We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation.”
Meanwhile, the paper’s breathtaking bias continues elsewhere. This morning, the paper put up Patrick Kingsley’s “news analysis” of the Flour Massacre, which exonerates Israel completely. Here’s the headline: “Lack of Plan for Governing Gaza Formed Backdrop to Deadly Convey Chaos”
And although competition in the article was fierce, here’s the single most offensive sentence:
“More than 100 were killed and 700 injured, Gazan health officials said, after thousands of hungry civilians rushed at a convoy of aid trucks, leading to a stampede and prompting Israeli soldiers to fire at the crowd.”
The dishonesty in that sentence is astonishing. Let’s even assume there was a “stampede,” (although Kingsley himself was in Jerusalem and the report doesn’t quote anyone who was actually at the scene). How does a desperate rush for food by unarmed people justify shooting 800 of them, killing 100? The sentence slyly cites “Gazan health officials,” but we can doubt that it was they who whitewashed the Israeli military.
But Kingsley’s dishonesty here is even greater. Anyone who has followed Israel’s murderous invasion on alternative media knows that the Israeli military has been caught many times killing and torturing civilians and proudly desecrating Gazan homes. The Times has almost completely refused to cover these Israeli military atrocities. So Patrick Kingsley obviously felt no need to provide the context that might have at least hinted to readers what certainly did happen on February 29 — which is that an army that has committed war crimes for nearly five months decided to slaughter more starving and defenseless human beings who were presenting no threat.
