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Bias-as-a-Business-Strategy Won’t Rescue the New York Times
A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri / File.
A long front-page article in the New York Times faults Israel for killing journalists in Gaza, claiming that has inhibited the world from seeing what is happening there. The article, though, fails to fault Hamas for its role in impeding journalism. And it also strangely omits the evidence that at least some of the Gazans portraying themselves as journalists are also members of terrorist organizations.
The Times article carries the online headline, “The War the World Can’t See.” A subheadline claims that because of the challenges faced by local journalists, “From outside Gaza, the scale of death and destruction is impossible to grasp.”
That claim of invisibility may seem like a stretch to Times readers who have been following the Times’s own endless coverage. The Times has featured satellite images of destroyed Gaza buildings, interviews with doctors describing Civil War-style carnage at the hospitals that shelter Hamas tunnels the doctors claim to be unaware of, interviews with United Nations officials describing thirst and hunger (while the same officials studiously downplay discussion of the involvement of UN workers in the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. Somehow the protesters clogging Ivy League campuses and European cities have managed to get word of the Gazan suffering notwithstanding the Times’ worries about “communications blackouts.”
The Times goes on to cast blame for the supposed dearth of journalistic exploration of Gazan suffering. The culprit is—you guessed it—Israel. “At least 76 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas led an attack on Israel and Israel responded by launching an all-out war,” the Times says. “Nearly all the journalists who have died in Gaza since Oct. 7 were killed by Israeli airstrikes, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 38 of them at home, in their cars or alongside family members. That has led many Palestinians to accuse Israel of targeting journalists, though CPJ has not echoed that allegation.” Many Palestinians have all sorts of sinister and conspiratorial accusations against Israel; it’s the Times‘s job to debunk them or at least to fact-check them thoroughly, rather than just providing a megaphone to them.
The Times article quotes “Khawla al-Khalidi, 34, a Gazan TV journalist for Al Arabiya, a well-known regional Arabic-language TV channel,” who says, “Israel is afraid of the Palestinian narrative and of Palestinian journalists…They’re trying to silence us by cutting the networks.”
Not mentioned at all in the Times article is the news that, according to the Israel Defense Forces, two of the “journalists” listed as Gaza casualties, Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, “were members of Gaza-based terrorist organizations.” The IDF said, “Documents found by our troops in Gaza revealed Thuria’s role as Squad Deputy Commander in Hamas’ Gaza City Brigade, as well as Al-Dahdouh’s roles in the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization’s electronic engineering unit and previously as a deputy commander in IJ’s Zeitun Battalion.”
The IDF said the two were targeted while operating a drone, “posing a threat to our soldiers.” That would seem like a relevant fact to include in a Times article that carries accusations of Israel trying to squelch the Palestinian narrative by killing journalists.
The Times article also entirely excludes the fact that Hamas restricts, with threat of violence, the activities of journalists in areas that it controls. The Times has let this slip at least once—”Hamas restricts journalists in Gaza,” the newspaper’s Jerusalem bureau chief, acknowledged back in November, but that concession is somehow missing from this latest Times article, which is all about restrictions on journalism in Gaza.
The Times article also carries, as one of three bylines, that of Abu Bakr Bashir. A web page for the “refugee journalism project” reports that Bashir “fled” Gaza in 2019 “when Hamas, the militant Islamic nationalist group that governs the territory, tried to control his reporting.”
Why does the Times article have such a slant? One might chalk it up to anti-Israel bias by the newspaper’s management, or to the particular editors and reporters who handled this piece. Certainly possible. But then what explains the willingness of the Times also to publish articles such as one about “How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7” or others on the extensive nature of the Hamas tunnel network underneath Gaza?
One explanation that fits the pattern is a business-and-technology driven shift by the Times to emphasize headlines and stories that will be clicked on and shared socially by partisans of both sides in the Israel-Hamas war. Rather than trying to make each individual story balanced, the Times is publishing a variety of stories that it can claim together mount up to a nuanced and accurate portrayal of the reality. That seems to me like a dodge, because a lot of readers don’t read the full Times report, they just read a single story at a time when the story is shared socially.
It’s one thing to take such an approach on the opinion pages, where the Times offers Bret Stephens columns to be read and shared by Israel-lovers alongside Nicholas Kristof columns to be read and shared by Israel-haters. What’s new in the Israel-Gaza war is that the Times is taking a similar approach in the news articles, which, unlike the opinion columns, used to aspire, at least ostensibly, to a sort of above-the-fray balance.
It’s not clear the new Times strategy is a business success. The company’s stock price is down more than 8 percent year to date as of February 8, and plunged this week when the company released its fourth quarter results. The overall stock market, meanwhile, is up. But the Times management compares itself to places such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Sports Illustrated, which appear to be doing even worse, business-wise. So keep an eye out for more of the “bias-as-a-business strategy” approach.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post Bias-as-a-Business-Strategy Won’t Rescue the New York Times first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid
A member of the Emergency Response Division holds an Islamic State militants flag in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani/File Photo.
A US Army veteran who flew a black Islamic State flag on a truck that he rammed into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans shows how the extremist group still retains the ability to inspire violence despite suffering years of losses to a US-led military coalition.
At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.
Its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by US special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.
The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.
Islamic State responded by scattering in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.
The US-led coalition, including some 4,000 US troops in Syria and Iraq, has continued hammering the militants with airstrikes and raids that the US military says have seen hundreds of fighters and leaders killed and captured.
Yet Islamic State has managed some major operations while striving to rebuild and it continues to inspire lone wolf attacks such as the one in New Orleans which killed 14 people.
Those assaults include one by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two explosions targeting an official ceremony in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100.
Despite the counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, “repaired its media operations, and restarted external plotting,” Acting US Director for the National Counterterrorism Center Brett Holmgren warned in October.
Geopolitical factors have aided Islamic State. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has caused widespread anger that jihadists use for recruitment. The risks to Syrian Kurds who are holding thousands of Islamic State prisoners could also create an opening for the group.
Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or praised it on its social media sites, although its supporters have, US law enforcement agencies said.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been growing concern about Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and resurging in Syria.
Those worries were heightened after the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the potential for the militant group to fill the vacuum.
‘MOMENTS OF PROMISE’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to use this period of uncertainty to re-establish capabilities in Syria, but said the United States is determined not to let that happen.
“History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said.
A U.N. team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the U.N. Security Council in July a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country.
European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe,” it said.
“In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,” the team said.
Jim Jeffrey, former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat Islamic State, said the group has long sought to motivate lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.
Its threat, however, remains efforts by ISIS-K to launch major mass casualty attacks like those seen in Moscow and Iran, and in Europe in 2015 and 2016, he said.
ISIS also has continued to focus on Africa.
This week, it said 12 Islamic State militants using booby-trapped vehicles attacked a military base on Tuesday in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland, killing around 22 soldiers and wounding dozens more.
It called the assault “the blow of the year. A complex attack that is first of its kind.”
Security analysts say Islamic State in Somalia has grown in strength because of an influx of foreign fighters and more revenue from extorting local businesses, becoming the group’s “nerve centre” in Africa.
‘PATH TO RADICALIZATION’
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and US Army veteran who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said on Thursday.
Jabbar appeared to have made recordings in which he condemned music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo Islamic State’s playbook.
Investigators were looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization,” uncertain how he transformed from military veteran, real-estate agent and one-time employee of the major tax and consulting firm Deloitte into someone who was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” an acronym for Islamic State.
US intelligence and homeland security officials in recent months have warned local law enforcement about the potential for foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, to target large public gatherings, specifically with vehicle-ramming attacks, according to intelligence bulletins reviewed by Reuters.
US Central Command said in a public statement in June that Islamic State was attempting to “reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.”
CENTCOM said it based its assessment on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate which would put the group “on pace to more than double the number of attacks” claimed the year before.
H.A. Hellyer, an expert in Middle East studies and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said it was unlikely Islamic State would gain considerable territory again.
He said ISIS and other non-state actors continue to pose a danger, but more due to their ability to unleash “random acts of violence” than by being a territorial entity.
“Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa that a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a time,” Hellyer said, “but I don’t see that as likely, not as the precursor to a serious comeback.”
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US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says
US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this White House handout image taken in the Oval Office in Washington, US, April 4, 2024. Photo: The White House/Handout via REUTERS
The administration of President Joe Biden has notified Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel, a US official said on Friday, with Washington maintaining support for its ally.
The deal would need approval from the House of Representatives and Senate committees and includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells, Axios reported earlier. The package also includes small-diameter bombs and warheads, according to Axios.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Protesters have for months demanded an arms embargo against Israel, but US policy has largely remained unchanged. In August, the United States approved the sale of $20 billion in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.
The Biden administration says it is helping its ally defend against Iran-backed terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
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Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag
Illustrative. An undated picture of (from left) Liri Albag, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Karina Ariev held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, that was made public by their families on July 16, 2024. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum
i24 News – The Palestinian terrorists of Hamas on Saturday released a video showing signs of life from Israeli hostage Liri Albag.
Albag’s family requested media not to share the video or images from it, asking journalists to respect their privacy at this moment.
Albag, 20, is a surveillance soldier stationed at the Nahal Oz base, was abducted on October 7 by Palestinian jihadists.
The post Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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