The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.
The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians, who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.
Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups.
Oof, not a good look for NYT, although I can kind of get it if you see the genecide term as too left leaning. And in some sense it is, but indiscriminately killing civilians is bad no matter what you call it.
That said, I don’t get the sense they’re trying to hide the atrocities there. If you’re talking straight facts about the number of civilians, including children, getting killed, they’re not hiding that at NYT.
Maybe calling the invasion a genecide or ethnic cleansing also implies motive, which could also just be a bridge too far an accusation. It feels like it, but that’s only becoming more clear as more facts about the invasion come to light.
In this comment: calling out mass killings is too left.
“Moderate liberals” never change.
if you see the genecide term as too left leaning
How? Pretty sure the Nazis in WW2 (wests closest memory to genocide) were right leaning.
Isreals current government is right wing, so accusations of genocide are therefore left wing. Context matters, lol
Oof, sorry.
Genocide is left leaning? I didn’t realize war crimes were politically aligned.
It’s related to Humanism or in more general terms a concern for the well-being of others and not just of oneself, which is a core, anchoring principle of the Left.
That’s not to say that rightwingers are all mean or that leftwingers are all nice to other people, it’s more saying that anybody whose political position is derived from their own personal principles (rather than tribalism or wholesale mindless acceptance of pre-packaged ideologies) if they have higher empathy will tend to favour the side that at the very least tries to balance the common good with personal greed, not the side that sells only personal upside maximization.
On the Left you can still end up with ideologies that are ideologically layered so thickly, so heavilly and so inflexibly on that foundation of the greater good principle, that de facto they do harm to the many whilst claiming they’re doing it for the greater good (Soviet Style Communist being a good example).
Don’t mix up America’s Me First conservatism with all right wing ideology. There’s plenty of authoritarian states that have used the idea of a communal good to rally support. There’s even some delivery on that, as long as you’re in the good group. The only real differences I’ve ever been able to find are in the form of government (elections vs shredders), inclusivity vs exclusivity, and the details of the social safety net. (Don’t become unproductive in a far right country unless you’re rich)
For example if we took all the videos of “good” Germans doing fun stuff from 1935 to 1942 out of context it would look like a pretty nice place to live. Hitler did try to make his base happy. That is of course the most extreme example, but it’s repeated over and over again at lower levels.
That’s a good point.
The difference between the Left and the Right in the old days tended to be more about the means to make your country a better place (and who you were willing to sacrifice for it), so as a leftie you could actually respect some rightwingers even whilst disagreeing with them because the goals were mostly the same and the big differences were in the path to get there.
Now, in the day and age of Neoliberal Capitalism (which is far from only an American thing) the difference between Left and Right is the difference between the goal being maximization of the common good or individual upside maximization.
I didn’t realize war crimes were politically aligned.
They usually are - right-wingers love war crimes.
If you go far enough left they get celebrated too. But you know what the biggest driver of war crimes is? Convenience. It’s easier to not check the protected target list. It’s easier to just handwaive accusations away. It’s easier to just shoot anyone you want. It’s easier to ignore civil considerations.
If you go far enough left they get celebrated too
No, they don’t. The Makhnovists certainly did commit war crimes - so did the Spanish anarchists (though quite microscopic in comparison to the atrocities perpetrated by their opponents). Anarchists themselves see those as failures - not something to be celebrated.
Are you going to tell me that Stalin wasn’t far left?
Nope. Stalin was a right-winger. “Left” and “right” are not aesthetic classifications - they describe your stance towards the status quo, ie, to your relationship with institutionalized power.
If you wish to call Stalin a leftist, you have to prove that Stalin (somehow) had no instututionalized power in the USSR. Are you willing to try?
Oh only anarchy is leftist? That’s uhhh… An interesting position.
although I can kind of get it if you see the genecide term as too
left leaningon the nose.FTFY.
That said, I don’t get the sense they’re trying to hide the atrocities there.
No, they just dress them up in neutral language so that liberals like you can camoflage your approval of this genocide without breaking cover.
The term ‘genocide’ might be contentious, but ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘occupation’ shouldn’t be. They literally describe the situation in the West Bank since the creation of the state of Israel itself.
Just throw “apparent” in front of it: “Israel’s apparent genocide of Palestinians”, etc.
On the other hand, the fact that it’s getting leaked by NYT staff who also gave written or verbal accounts to The Intercept is a pretty good sign that not everybody is complicit.
The irritating truth is that the only way the media can reliably get the government to say anything is for them to play by the governments
rules“guidelines.” If they start agroing the govt. they’ll get left out of the loop (or that particular reporter will be blacklisted) and there’s always somebody else willing to kiss ass to get ahead.The media later: why doesn’t anyone trust us and believe in wild conspiracy theories?
They destroy their own credibility and then cry foul when the extreme right uses this to spread hate propaganda.
It’s worse when it turns out some of the wild conspiracy theories were true all along.
If you lie to people and say Directed Energy Weapons don’t exist, and anyone who thinks they do is a Nazi spouting nonsense about “Jewish Space Lasers”, then people who find out not only do DEWs actually exist (In fact they even have a wikipedia page about them, that’s how blatantly real they are) trust you less, but they’re more likely to buy into really fucked up shit like Holocaust Denial and Flat Earth as they suddenly believe the media was “probably lying about that too!”
“The media”
yes, “the media” seeing as how over 80% of news is owned by the same 3 people, “the media” is very fitting
Yeah “the media” indeed. Not sure how after this immense collaboration from almost every single major newspaper to manufacture consent for israel’s Genocide people still don’t think there’s something fishy going on.
The writer of this article himself just did an interview on The Hill elaborating on this
Also here’s a very interesting video of the Biden Administration having a lot of difficulty pronouncing the word “Palestine”
Ryan Grim is doing great work.
NYT doing a pigshit job. Color me surprised
I actually am surprised by that. The times is generally reliable on most subjects.
Their op ed pages, in particular, have been unhinged lunacy for years.
Isn’t that like what op eds are for though? Like an op ed is essentially a newspaper letting a journalist or a non-journalist) say “personally though, I’m just saying…”
Op eds are to bring in thoughts from people who maybe arent good journalists, thats true, but given the field of possible missed perspectived they still fielded a disproportionate number of like straight up covid misinfo and transphobia, to the point where I think their op ed strategy might be hate clicks or something to sell ads rather than alternate perspectives nobody has heard before.
Well we get the Sunday times and my wife just confirmed that bit about the transphobia, so I have to admit, that is distressing. Neither of us have noticed the covid misinfo, but I’m inclined to take your word for it.
All that said… It’s still the op ed section… This is what it’s meant for. These views are explicitly not endorsed by the publisher. The op ed is a section at least in part, designed to be a space for dissenting opinions. If nothing else, this is where you can read about what some other people are saying. If you like, you can think of it as intelligence gathering on the opposition.
In the end, I just think it’s not being fair to say that The Times as a whole is bad source because their crazy section is crazy. I mean, that section is well labeled. Actually, I think what’s really frightening is that those crazy views are in fact relatively mainstream in much of the country; I would argue that it’s good to know just how crazy things are getting.
cough Iraq cough WMDs cough
No, it hasn’t for decades. They’ve just been relying on that reputation.
Manufacturing consent.
The new york times approves of the genocide. Why else restrict the use of the word?
They are not making an assertion for or against the actions themselves. They are saying the term “genocide” is not a journalistically appropriate term for the actions. You can obviously disagree with that assertion but they are trying to use terms as neutrally as possible in order to be impartial.
Think of like “pro life” vs “pro choice”, newspapers have to pick words to say, there is a guide where they say what to say about who. Even if they decided to say “pro choice” and “anti abortion” that might indicate political bias but it doesn’t mean they approve of abortions themselves.
Oh, the free world at it again.
When a country populated with brown people is too weak, it’s bullied to not arm itself or pursue any other kind of strategically significant development, in economy and society too.
When it’s sufficiently strong and useful not to be bullied, it can do anything up to genocide, and not even have its hand slapped.
I’m becoming too sympathetic to Iran, Hezbollah and all that guerilla-mafia network over time. They look scary, but commit fewer crimes than people condemning them. Naturally “crime” here is not “crime as judged by a court”, but something of the “theft”, “murder”, “torture”, “rape” kind.
When it’s sufficiently strong and useful not to be bullied, it can do anything up to genocide, and not even have its hand slapped.
Idk. I’m looking at Iran right now, and I am under the distinct impression that its about to get hella-bullied.
That said, Iran is aligning itself with a Central Asiatic block of states - China, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, maybe Saudi Arabia depending on how things go - that’s going to make it a harder target than in decades past. In much the same way Western conflicts with Russia failed to bring down Vladdy P’s regime, I don’t think simply throwing SWIFT banking sanctions at Iran one more time will do anything to shape their foreign policy or belligerent attitude towards Israel.
I’m becoming too sympathetic to Iran, Hezbollah and all that guerilla-mafia network over time.
Its easy to root for the underdog. I suspect you won’t like them as soon as you see their leaders assuming actual policy-making rules on a global scale. But I also can’t help notice how they’re fighting back against a creeping European fascism in a way we hadn’t seen in the 20th century.
I don’t know if that ends in a new Iron Curtain between the East and West or we go full tilt into WW3. Neither seem particularly good, but the former would see a lot fewer dead children.
In the end, that’s all I can really cheer for. An end to atrocity, and the sooner the better.
I agree with most things, but I don’t think Iran’s relations with Turkey and Pakistan are going to become warmer than practical coexistence. Also in Russia that regime was almost supported as something more predictable than imagined communists or neo-nazis.
I don’t think Iran’s relations with Turkey and Pakistan are going to become warmer than practical coexistence.
As the BRI extends through Central Asia, I think you’re going to see a lot more cross-pollination of ethnic groups and business interests. That’s going to bring the block together in the same way rail projects stretching across Europe presaged the EU.
Also in Russia that regime was almost supported as something more predictable than imagined communists or neo-nazis.
The prime mover behind United Russia’s success is the most rapid improvement in living conditions for native Russians since the collapse of the USSR. It isn’t an imagined outside enemy but a very real inside economic boom. And this, despite a collaboration of Western nations to crash the Ruble and bring the Russian war machine to a grinding halt.
I may agree about Central Asia.
I would also like to see Uzbekistan developing and modernizing, as a counterweight to Turkey and a country with no natural enemies (except China, with Uyghurs and Uzbeks being more or less the same people) and big population.
But still Turkey and Pakistan are simply in another block. They may not like Israel, but that doesn’t mean any fundamental split with NATO, West etc.
About Russia - I meant also that before than boom, after Yeltsin’s election of 1996, it was a popular point of view than even if he cheated, the alternative was communists winning that election. And also - it was, yes, very real, but I am not talking about arguments in favor of Putin inside Russia (not persuading everyone, because most of the improvement happened in Moscow, SPb etc), I am talking about Western institutions confirming Russian elections even as massive protests were happening, and also that talking point that if not Putin, then neo-Nazis would win.
But still Turkey and Pakistan are simply in another block. They may not like Israel, but that doesn’t mean any fundamental split with NATO, West etc.
Its been a split that’s widened as Turkey was divided from the EU block and NATO/West interests piled into India after Pakistan kicked out its military dictator, Parvez Musharraf, in 2008. A lot of the post-Cold War alliances have shifted as these military juntas have failed. Egypt would likely be another in the Iran/Iraq/Turkey/Pakistan block if Mohamed Morsi - the replacement for Hosni Mubarak - hadn’t himself been couped back out of power in short order. And you know Qaddafi’s Libya would have been on board, as he’s been a Pan-Africanist since the 70s.
About Russia - I meant also that before than boom, after Yeltsin’s election of 1996, it was a popular point of view than even if he cheated, the alternative was communists winning that election.
Well, the Communist Party did win the referendum in 1992. The cheating and the rapid privatization were what ultimately fractured and collapsed the Soviet party system. Once they no longer had a patronage system to command broad popular support, there was very little incentive (other than ideological orthodoxy) to continue on. But United Russia absorbed more Soviets than just Putin.
The real failure of Communism as an institution came under Brezhnev and Gorbachev, as economic progress stalled relative to the Western peer nations. That, plus the near-total infiltration and privatization denuded the party of its base of support.
If someone came into the US GOP or Dem parties and stripped them of all their donors, their NGOs, and a huge swath of their state/local leadership positions, neither of them would last very long either. But the members of those parties would continue on in some other configuration.
I meant that in 1996 CPRF were the scarecrow and it was said that even if the results were falsified, they shouldn’t be allowed to win the election.
And later instead of CPRF the scarecrow was some poorly-defined neo-Nazis which would come to power if Putin loses the election (implicitly also saying that falsifications are fine to preserve stability or something).
the scarecrow was some poorly-defined neo-Nazis which would come to power if Putin loses the election
I don’t know about “poorly defined”. I think they were pretty explicitly calling liberal candidates outside the United Russia party out as puppets of Berlin and DC. And its not like the Christian Democrats of Germany (much less the modern Greens or the AfD) have done an incredible job of purging fascist ideology from their ranks.
Russians were very rightly worried about getting the Yugoslavia treatment if a liberal reformer came in to further balkinize the state. And say what you will about the Balkins before Tito’s death, but it got inundated with far-right ideology as soon as his corpse was safely six feet under.
WW1 2.0
Friendly request to put NYT on the ban list for propaganda outlets
Just the other day I was on this stupid website getting attacked because I dared to say that NYT was not a particularly reliable outlet, and that they should be taken with extreme skepticism if they use anonymous sources.
😭
I was told five months ago by a user here when debunking the NYT’s fake rape article that “I should learn a thing a thing or two about media literacy”. Because “the New York Times is highly reputable! Unlike those fake news outlets like Mondoweiss and TheGrayzone!”
That did not age well.
See this is why I actually hate that people are pushing that bullshit ground news site so hard.
People will become reliant on what it tells them about a publication which does not mean an accurate representation. But then they can parade around bragging they know what the true middle is and are so enlightened.
Plus they take a subscription fee however they have no journalists and don’t pay back to the publications they scrape from, but instead let you follow a link to their site at least to get some revenue.
The run a news link aggregator with a “bias” catcher on it that’s pre-determined by tags for an algorithm to parse. It’s just for libertarians to feel like they are winning against the news I swear.
I didn’t even think about the recent rape stories, my mind went straight for the Iraq war.
The rape stories were absolutely massive in manufacturing consent for israels Genocide. Israel denied a UN forensic investigation into their fake rape accusations. We now know that those were works of fiction, mostly from ZAKA which made up the 40 beheaded babies. But then right when support for israels Genocide hit a low, Jeffrey Gettleman teamed up with two israeli ex IDF soldiers to write a massive propaganda piece.
Almost every other major Western owned supposedly credible propaganda outlet copy pasted it despite glaring problems being pointed out shortly after its release. Reuters The Guardian, Wapo, You name it and they were manufacturing consent for Genocide. There was no evidence anywhere, but it didn’t matter. Israel got enough public support to start massacring Palestinians again.
This article from The Intercept contained a sentence that summarized it very well: Netanyahu’s War on Truth - Israel’s Ruthless Propaganda Campaign to Dehumanize Palestinians
At the center of Israel’s information warfare campaign is a tactical mission to dehumanize Palestinians and to flood the public discourse with a stream of false, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable allegations.
Reminded me of the dead babies in incubators. What a classic, it’s true that we are in the era of remakes!
Dead babies in incubators you say? That’s the IDF special
Don’t forget about burning babies, another Zionist special!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/05/palestinian-boy-mohammed-abu-khdeir-burned-alive
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/7/31/palestinian-baby-burned-to-death-in-settler-attack
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/06/settlers-celebrate-palestinian/
And putting babies in ovens, something that the Zionists keep accusing Palestinians of doing over and over and over again! (You might have heard this claim now but they have been saying the same thing for decades - repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth).
Same here, lol. It’s been a long time since the NYT was a reliable news source.
There is a lot of Western guilt about failing the Jewish people in WW2. Seems that this extends to turning a blind eye when it comes to Israel.
Always has been. Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel are intrinsically linked to anti-semitism.
There is a lot of Western guilt about failing the Jewish people in WW2.
Not really. Western ruling elites supported Zionism after WW2 for the exact same reason they supported it before WW2 - to have a place they can dump the (so-called) “Jewish Problem.” The west is no less white supremacist and antisemitic today than they were in 1824 - the west is just desperate to distance itself from the atrocities it’s colonialist logic resulted in during WW2.
The important part is that this distancing shouldn’t prevent the actual mechanisms from working. Deals from being concluded, goods moving, weapons getting where they should. You know, all the old stuff.
There goes the last of NYT integrity
Style guides similar to this are pretty standard. This much bias in them is not.
They can’t lose their integrity if they never had it in the first place
Technically the very last of it would be gone if NYT staff didn’t give all of this info to The Intercept.
NYT made sure to harass their Arab employees to find out who’s leaking this info:
Union Accuses NYT Of Racially Targeting Staff In Leak Probe Over Paper’s Israel Reporting
In a letter sent Friday to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, Susan DeCarava, president of NewsGuild of New York, said that union-backed journalists who raised concerns about the paper’s approach to covering Gaza were being “targeted for their national origin, ethnicity and race, creating an ominous chilling-effect across the newsroom and effectively silencing necessary and critical internal discussion.”
The Times launched an internal leak probe, which was first reported on by Vanity Fair, after The Intercept published an exposé in January revealing that the newspaper’s flagship podcast, “The Daily,” had canceled a planned episode of a Times investigative report alleging Hamas militants “weaponized sexual violence” when they attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
According to the exposé, the episode was shelved after the December report could not pass a fact check and had faced questions of credibility from staff and the public.
In response to the exposé, the Times’ leadership launched a weekslong investigation to find the alleged whistleblower who leaked information to The Intercept. In her letter, DeCarava said that guild members “asserted their protected right to union representation” when they were called into meetings with management’s investigators.
I thought whistleblowers were meant to have immunity. Also, the assumption that only people of Arab descent would find the treatment of Palestinians detestable… Absolutely bonkers.
Even more evidence that the journalists at NYT are fighting back against the corporate leadership.
I was discussing Western media’s coverage of the genocide and my cousin said that he thinks nyt is a very “unbiased” source. Fucking hilarious.
It rides on a reputation
I can see pushing to avoid the use of genocide and maybe even ethnic cleansing. But occupied territories? What the fuck else could they be considered?
And for the record, I think Israel’s actions are pretty clearly ethnic cleansing at the very least.
And by UN official statements and standards adopted after the Holocaust: definitional genocide.
But occupied territories? What the fuck else could they be considered?
Well, annexation means giving citizenship, and occupation means avoiding that. By now these people apparently think they hold God by the beard and can avoid the reputational unpleasantness of calling occupation occupation too.
“”“”“settlers”“”“” I think is the term they’re using for the territories being taken.
“Settlers” is such a euphemism already. What would work better? Interlopers? Invaders? Thieves?
