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.
I actually am surprised by that. The times is generally reliable on most subjects.
cough Iraq cough WMDs cough
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.
No, it hasn’t for decades. They’ve just been relying on that reputation.