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.
Contact the newsroom: [email protected]
Like CNN, the New York Times aims to cover the globe, even from inside despotic regimes. Yet ethical compromise is inevitable in the controlled realms of dictators and medieval monarchs. Language must not offend, nor can there be reminders of unflattering policies and events. Watchful officials keep records, and journalists pay a price for perceived infractions.
It seems that some members of the media are having a tough time differentiating the terms of the American brokered "road map" from Palestinian unilateral demands on Israel. Namely, while Palestinians have conditioned their cease-fire on the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons (among other demands), the "road map" plan, drawn up by the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations, has nothing at all to say about Palestinian prisoners.
Cartoonist Joe Sacco has made it a professional goal to champion the Palestinian cause, presenting their perspectives on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in easily-accessible, comic strip form to the American public. His longest work to date on this issue is a 9-issue comic book entitled "Palestine," originally published by Fantagraphics in 1993 and republished in book form in 2002 with an introduction by noted Palestinian polemicist Edward Said. Written after a 2-month backpacking stint in the Gaza Strip during the first Intifada, the comic book depicts Israeli interrogators, soldiers, and Jewish settlers brutalizing and harassing innocent Palestinians.
The New York Times has trouble reporting the facts straight about Middle East documents, repeatedly distorting their terms and shifting responsibility — and fault — to Israel. Recent misinformation about the road map by correspondent Steven Weisman is fuel for critics who see the paper increasingly marshaling its news pages to advance an editorial agenda.
Newspaper headlines about the Hamas terrorist bombing in Jerusalem — for which the death tally has now reached 17 — and Israel's strike against Hamas in Gaza that killed four members of that organization and five bystanders have very often failed to represent events clearly.
The day after the bloody rush hour bombing of bus #14a in downtown Jerusalem, the White House stated that the obstacle to Middle East peace was the terrorist group Hamas.
Despite dramatic public exposure of the New York Times' questionable policies in handling repeated deceptions by one of its reporters, the newspaper has again misled its readers, this time about the terms of the "Road Map." Instead of reporting the actual terms of the peace plan drawn up by the "Quartet" (United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia), the Times has injected its own language.
On March 25, 2003, the New York Times ran the following incendiary headline over an article by James Bennet:
The New York Times finished off 2002 with a bang in its coverage of Israel. On December 28th a page-four story (“Dreaming of Palestine, Teenager Writes a Novel”) and a large smiling photo of Randa Ghazi brought readers a breezy profile of the Egyptian-Italian teenage authoress of a virulent anti-Israel novel.
A respectful dissent, please, from Gary Rosenblatt’s column, “Don’t Just Blame the Media,” (Nov. 8). Rosenblatt asserts that “for the most part, mainstream American coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been fair.”