Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows
Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post skewed coverage toward Israeli narratives, according to a quantitative analysis.
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage.
The print media outlets, which play an influential role in shaping U.S. views of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, paid little attention to the unprecedented impact of Israel’s siege and bombing campaign on both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip.
Major U.S. newspapers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7. Pro-Palestinian activists have accused major publications of pro-Israel bias, with the New York Times seeing protests Opens in a new tabat its headquarters in Manhattan for its coverage of Gaza –– an accusation supported by our analysis.
You're viewing a single thread.
The open-source analysis focuses on the first six weeks of the conflict, from the October 7 Hamas-led attacks that killed 1,139 Israelis and foreign workers to November 24, the beginning of the weeklong “humanitarian truce” agreed to by both parties to facilitate hostage exchanges. During this period, 14,800 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Today, the Palestinian death toll is over 22,000.
This paragraph mentions Palestinian deaths three times but Israeli deaths once. Therefore the Intercept is biased, according to the Intercept.
I suggest you read the articles, they have graphs and stuff.
I did read the article. I think the methods are questionable. Making a graph doesn't mean the methods are sound.
For example:
For every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times — or a rate 16 times more per death that of Palestinians.
In other words "There have been 20000 Palestinian deaths and 1000 Israeli deaths" is considered biased, and that sentence should have used the word "Palestinian" twenty times because there were twenty times as many deaths.
Sure, that one point wasn't terribly compelling but you have still dramatically and willfully misinterpreted most of the article.
The rest of the article is also flawed.
For instance "[the media] mentioned antisemitism more than Islamophobia". This presupposes that antisemitism should not be mentioned more than Islamophobia. But why?
If I said "The media mentioned Islamophobia more than Francophobia" then that's not an example of bias, because Islamophobia has been newsworthy for years and nobody pays attention to the French.
So is antisemitism more newsworthy than Islamophobia? Maybe so, given the Stefanik hearings. Maybe not. But the Intercept hasn't even considered this.
Likewise, they count usage of words like "massacre" and "slaughter". But what is that supposed to prove? The Intercept presupposes an unbiased source would not associate "massacre" with Hamas more than Israelis, but why?
Finally, the Intercept wonders why "children" is not used more often in reporting. Here's one possibility: the media treated dead adults and dead children equally, lumping them together in "total dead". They are not singling groups out in a way that the Intercept would prefer. That's the opposite of bias.
Thought experiment: if the media constantly reported "X deaths, of whom Y were Christians" wouldn't that be kind of creepy? Why does someone's religion even matter when tallying the dead? Well, the same could be said of someone's age.
For instance "[the media] mentioned antisemitism more than Islamophobia". This presupposes that antisemitism should not be mentioned more than Islamophobia. But why?
If I said "The media mentioned Islamophobia more than Francophobia" then that's not an example of bias, because Islamophobia has been newsworthy for years and nobody pays attention to the French.
So is antisemitism more newsworthy than Islamophobia? Maybe so, given the Stefanik hearings. Maybe not. But the Intercept hasn't even considered this.
The article clearly considers the increased rise in reporting on antisemitic actions vs Islamophobic actions taking place since the beginning of the war and shows clearly that the big three MSM corps much prefer to report on antisemitic actions as opposed to Islamophobic actions despite similar rises of incidents against both groups since the beginning of the war.
Likewise, they count usage of words like "massacre" and "slaughter". But what is that supposed to prove? The Intercept presupposes an unbiased source would not associate "massacre" with Hamas more than Israelis, but why?
The article claims, and in my opinion sufficiently proves, that the MSM is attempting to garner more sympathy for the Israeli side as opposed to the Palestinians by using more emotive and personal language to refer to the deaths of Israelis and uses more cold, clinical language when speaking of Palestinian deaths.
Finally, the Intercept wonders why "children" is not used more often in reporting. Here's one possibility: the media treated dead adults and dead children equally, lumping them together in "total dead". They are not singling groups out in a way that the Intercept would prefer. That's the opposite of bias.
Except the Intercept does show that "children" is used in the reporting in this conflict and is used specifically more often when talking about Israeli deaths in order to humanize the deaths on the Israeli side. The reporting from the MSM very specifically uses less human language to refer to the deaths of Palestinian children.
Thought experiment: if the media constantly reported "X deaths, of whom Y were Christians" wouldn't that be kind of creepy? Why does someone's religion even matter when tallying the dead? Well, the same could be said of someone's age.
This is just an insane take. It's obvious why it's important to report on the number of children killed in a conflict.
similar rises
No, the article doesn't even attempt to measure the rises, much less show that they were similar.
humanize the deaths on the Israeli side.
No, the Intercept is again looking for an axe to grind. For example:
The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that 1,799 people have been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Hamas’s assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children and young music festivalgoers.
Here the Israeli children are uncounted. Is that an example of anti-Israeli bias? No, because despite counting only Palestinian children the media made the mistake of describing their methodology: children are those under 18. Less precise language would be better. Does "children" even appear elsewhere in that article?
“We have wounded, we have elderly, we have children who are in hospitals,” she said.
Clearly those are Israeli children. No? They are Palestinian? Yeah but this was 10/13 so what about all the mentions of Israeli children still in hospitals? None? The same article only mentions Palestinian "children" in hospitals? Ok, well the Intercept will have to report that as a counterpoint. Just kidding, this is the Intercept after all:
The aforementioned front-page New York Times report and a Washington Post column are rare exceptions to the dearth of coverage about Palestinian children.
The Intercept is worse than lazy, they think their readers are too dumb to remember the news.
Just the first six hits from just one Google search:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/03/gaza-premature-babies-dead-nasr/
The similar rises bit was my own delving into the numbers.
Why are you so insistent that the MSM has no bias against Palestinians? It clearly does.
Also, the fact that there are some articles about Palestinians doesn't disprove anything. You clearly have your own bias against Palestinians and must insist on there not being a bias against them.
Have a good life. I won't respond to this thread any further.
Why are you so insistent that the MSM has no bias against Palestinians?
I don't insist that, at all. Maybe they do.
I'm just evaluating the Intercept's methodology, which is garbage. So the article doesn't persuade me in either direction, and like you I'll have to do my own research.
I'm unsure what your point is.
This is only in the first six weeks, current bias against Palestinians is even higher.
The Intercept doesn't report on the deaths. It's not a classic "news" site in the way these papers are. They mainly break scandals and leaks such as CNN and the IDF Censor .
The Intercept is measuring "bias" by comparing the ratio of Palestinians/Israeli deaths to the ratio of using the words "Palestinian" and "Israeli" in the media.
Which means according to the Intercept, if CNN writes "There have been 20000 Palestinian deaths and 1000 Israeli deaths" then this is another example of bias, because CNN only used "Palestinian" once in that sentence. Which is nonsense.
That was a single, not very compelling metric, among many others which were valid and definitely come closer to the truth. You are latching onto to the single weakest point in the article and acting as though it represents the entirety of the article's argument. Which it clearly does not.