The New York Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the world, not only influences its readers but also has significant impact on the news judgment and editorial perspective of other media. The caliber of accuracy, balance and thoroughness in this publication are therefore of particular importance.
The New York Times continues to eschew objectivity and employ a double standard in its coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Our six-month study of the newspaper's coverage details how the newspaper treats Israel with a harsher standard, omits context, and shows a clear preference for the Palestinian narrative.
With Abbas' cancellation of elections on the pretext that Israel has not said it will permit voting in eastern Jerusalem, some reports mislead on Israel's Oslo-mandated responsibilities concerning Palestinian elections. As for Palestinian electoral responsibilities under Oslo, those simply aren't on the radar.
The New York Times, once priding itself as the “paper of record,” is better recognized today as the “paper of advocacy.” Rather than documenting the various factors contributing to the unrest in Israel during Ramadan, it ignored rocketing from Gaza, emphasizing instead what could be blamed on Israeli Jews.
Did a fictional film depicting Palestinians encountering a checkpoint inspire John Brennan, architect of the US drone program, to pen an essay marred by grave errors of omission? Or was it, as he suggested elsewhere, something about Jewish moral failures?
A New York Times book review repeats the falsehood that Edward Said grew up in Jerusalem and fled Palestine in 1947, a myth that the paper twice previously corrected, most recently last month.
"Intelligence officials in the U.S. and Israel implicate Tel Aviv," says a Times subheading, using the common journalistic practice of referring to a nation's capital city as shorthand for the country's government.
After Israel arranged to get early access to enough COVID-19 vaccine for its entire population, outlets like the New York Times and human rights groups like Amnesty International mangled international law and the Oslo Accords to argue that Israel must also vaccinate Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
About Jesus's birthplace, where the vaccine is less available, New York Times readers would reasonably conclude — wrongly — that, unlike Jerusalem, there were no crowds in churches, no celebrations on the street.
In 1920, the vulnerable Jewish minority in Palestine formed the Haganah, an underground self-defense organization, after concluding the British authorities weren’t particularly interested in protecting Jews against Arab attackers. Or in New York Times speak: the Haganah was “an underground military organization sometimes battling alongside the colonizing British against the Arabs.”
"Emotional stories" of Palestinian children "crossing the checkpoint on the bus ride in from East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem" are just that: emotional stories. The non-existence of the checkpoint in question begs the question: Did the children really tell the stories, or was that an embellishment on the part of the adult author, Ruth Ebenstein?
