The answer to that is yes … in Israel, anyway. In a war started by Hamas with a grotesque massacre and pillaging of southern Israel, the New York Times has spent more time criticizing the victim rather than the perp. We know that thanks to an analysis conducted by Lilac Sigan for the Jerusalem Post, who researched the stories featured by the ‘Paper of Record’ in its newsletters since the start of the war.
Sigan found the coverage fairly balanced … for the first week of the war. After Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, however, criticism of Hamas shrunk dramatically in comparison to that of Israel — and disappeared altogether about two months ago.
First, let’s look at Sigan’s methodology:
Since the number of headlines is enormous, and it’s difficult to rank each one according to its placement and size in the print paper, time spent on the homepage, and digital channel promotion, we decided to analyze only the articles that The New York Times itself defined as most important – those included daily in the newsletter called Today’s Headlines. This is a daily collection sent by email to subscribers who request a summary of the main news from the past day, selected by the editorial team.
It can be assumed that those headlines chosen as the main news of the day also received emphasis in terms of size, placement, and promotion. Only about a third of the total headlines published about the war were included in the newsletter, and cumulatively, from October 7th to May 7th, they totaled 1,398. This number is also enormous, standing at four times the coverage of Israel throughout 2022.
This seems fair on two levels. First, this is essentially an audit sample, and an audit sample of 33% of a total data set should be considered very reliable. Second, to the extent that this is a selected audit sample rather than a random sample, the NYT performed the selection rather than the ‘auditor.” Presumably, the Times editors did not select these articles because they thought they didn’t represent the reporting they valued most.
What did Sigan find? To no one’s great astonishment — certainly not to that of our readers — the NYT heavily tilted its sympathies to one side. And guess which side that was?
Out of a total of 1,398 articles, 647 expressed empathy only towards Palestinians (46.2% of the articles). 147 articles expressed empathy only towards Israelis (10.5% of the articles), and 50 articles expressed empathy only towards the hostages (2.9% of the articles). Thus, summarizing the entire period, one can say that the Palestinians received 4.4 times more empathy than the Israelis and hostages combined.
But that not all she found. The distribution percentage changed over time as well:
Starting from January, as mentioned, empathy towards Israelis and the hostages dropped until it almost completely disappeared. It was expressed in 16 articles in January, 10 articles in February, 9 in March, and 7 in April. Among hundreds of articles expressing significant empathy towards Palestinians (63 in January, 72 in February, 76 in March, 100 in April), it is possible to mistakenly conclude that Israelis are not significantly suffering from the war.
Possible, certainly. Is that an intentional effect by NYT editors to manipulate public opinion? Your mileage may vary, but consider a parallel trend in criticism of Hamas:
The critical tone only towards Hamas dropped to 16 articles in November and continued to shrink until it almost completely disappeared, with only two articles in the last month checked (April 7th to May 7th). In that month, there were 99 articles with a critical tone only towards Israel, and another 11 articles that were critically phrased towards both Hamas and Israel (over the entire seven months, a total of 143 articles were published with a critical tone towards both Hamas and Israel).
That doesn’t appear to be an accident. Even when writing about the hostages kidnapped and held by Hamas, the NYT has managed to make the issue far more about Israel than the genocidal terrorists driving the war:
Out of a total of 50 headlines about hostages, only 28 expressed criticism of Hamas. Eleven criticized only Israel, six jointly criticized Israel and Hamas, one criticized the American treatment of hostages, and the rest did not express any criticism. In contrast, out of 647 articles that expressed empathy towards Palestinians, only two were phrased with a critical tone towards Hamas. Thirty-three expressed criticism towards both Israel and Hamas together, and 479 expressed criticism towards Israel. Only two articles out of 647 that expressed empathy towards Palestinians had a critical tone towards the Palestinian Authority (one of them jointly with Israel).
That became much more evident when Sigan narrowed the sample of 276 articles about the war designated as “Top News” in the newsletters in seven months. Less than six percent of those offered any sympathetic coverage of Israel or Israelis (16 articles), and half of those were about the hostages; only six of the sixteen offered any criticism of Hamas. What about the rest?
Out of 276 headlines in the Top news over seven months of war, 151 expressed empathy only towards Palestinians (55% of the headlines). Only 16 headlines expressed empathy towards Israelis (5.8%), half of them specifically towards the hostages. One hundred thirty of the 150 headlines expressing empathy towards Palestinians criticized Israel. That is more than 86%.
Sigan notes that the Pulitzer committee rewarded this tilted news reporting with a prize this year. The Walter Duranty category is still alive and kicking, it seems. Be sure to read what Sigan has to say about that.
However, it’s not just the NYT under fire. This morning, Jewish Insider reported that the Washington Post indulged in anti-Semitic conspiracy-theory tropes in reporting on the effort to get the city to put an end to the campus occupation and intimidation campaign against Jews at Columbia. That reporting drew hot rebukes from the NYC deputy mayor as well as parents of Columbia students at risk:
The Washington Post published a news story on Thursday suggesting that a group of wealthy Jewish donors used their influence to push New York City Mayor Eric Adams to send the NYPD onto Columbia University’s campus to clear out protesters.
The article alleges that a group of prominent business leaders privately voicing their concerns about growing pro-Hamas sentiment and instances of antisemitism on college campuses in a WhatsApp group chat “offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor.” …
Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for Adams, condemned the Post for the line of questioning in the first place, saying in a statement: “Let’s be very clear: Both times the NYPD entered Columbia University’s campus — on April 18th and April 30th — were in response to specific written requests from Columbia University to do so. Prior to these operations, Mayor Adams consistently stated that Columbia is a private institution on private property and that assistance would be provided only upon request.”
“Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false, and the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print,” Levy said.
Looks like this war has done wonders in exposing the anti-Semites on the Left, especially those in positions of power in media, politics, and Academia. Don’t expect the Protection Racket Media to cover it, though.
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