Sunday, January 26, 2014

Would a great newspaper slant the news against Israel?



CAMERA'S billboard in Times Square, just outside the offices of the New York Times, poses this question to the newspaper and its readers. With Times coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict continuing to include factual errors and promote a distorted sense of the region, we continue our campaign to raise awareness about the newspaper's lack of reliability.

Below you can find an image of our advertisement, placed in major New York City newspapers, about the Times's history of downplaying genocidal, anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Palestinian media, and another about the newspaper glossing over the murder of Malki Roth, a 15-year-old girl killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber, in a magazine article romanticizing acts of violence against Israeli civilians.

These examples are part of a pattern of bias. CAMERA's six-month study of New York Times coverage of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel found that the newspaper consistently treats Israel with a harsher standard, omits context, and shows a clear preference for the Palestinian narrative.

And now our billboard highlights the newspaper's habit of misrepresenting facts, omitting key information and skewing headlines, to encourage the newspaper of record to commit itself to its own promise of ethical journalism.

The New York Times consistently distorts the truth about Israel — on the news pages and on editorial pages, in the body of the article or in the headline. Here are just a sampling of the misrepresentations purveyed by the publication.

MISREPRESENTING FACTS

CLAIM: In The Times news pages, a reporter claimed that "with the peace process at a standstill and Israel's separation barrier and network of checkpoints long a fixture of the landscape, contacts between the two peoples have dwindled. Fewer Palestinians work inside Israel" (Jodi Rudoren, "A Tour Puts a City in Reach and at Arm's Length," March 26, 2013).

FACT: According to recent statistics, contacts between Palestinians and Israelis, whether through work or healthcare, have not dwindled but have steadily increased. "More than 930,000 Palestinians went through passageways into Israel in 2012, representing a continuing trend in recent years... tens of thousands of movements were recorded at passageways for the purpose of family visits and traveling in Israel, receiving medical care Israeli hospitals, commerce and employment for Palestinian workers and merchants in Israel" (Israel Civil Administration, "930,000 Palestinians Pass Through Israel," March 11, 2013).


The number of Palestinians granted permits to work in Israel has been steadily increasing and is at a peak since the start of a violent Palestinian intifada in 2000. The numbers of Palestinians receiving healthcare within Israel has been steadily rising as well.

The New York Times was informed of its error. It chose not to correct.

CLAIM: On the Opinion pages, contributing writer Ali Jarbawi, a former Palestinian Authority official, falsely claimed that Ariel Sharon "entered Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, a holy Muslim site, which triggered the second intifada," in 2000. He also erroneously stated that Sharon "was able to retain absolute Israeli control" over Gaza's land borders (Ali Jarbawi, "The Man Who Made Peace Impossible," Jan. 21, 2014).

FACT: In fact, Sharon had visited the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, and the plaza upon which the mosque sits. He did not “enter” the mosque. In addition, Egypt controls its border with the Gaza Strip.

On the day that the Op-Ed appeared, The New York Times was informed of its errors. It has not yet corrected, although an error about American unemployment in a separate Op-Ed which also appeared on Jan. 21 was corrected the very next day.

 
CLAIM: On the Opinion pages, columnist Thomas Friedman insisted that former Animals singer Eric Burdon decided to start "boycotting Israel over the occupation issue." He also claimed that "Israel's Jewish settlers" assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Thomas L. Friedman, "Daring to Fail," Aug. 7, 2013).

FACT: Eric Burdon performed in concert to a packed Zappa Shuni Amphitheater in Binyamina on Aug. 1, 2013 — a week before Friedman's column ran. He made clear that he never joined any boycott of Israel, and that a temporary cancellation was not in protest of Israeli policies, but rather a result of threats received by his publicist.

FACT: Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, was not a settler. He lived in the Israeli city of Herzliya, within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries. 
OMITTING KEY INFORMATION
The most extreme examples of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement have too often been omitted from The New York Times account of the conflict. For example, when a speaker said on Palestinian television that it is "act of worship" to "harvest the skulls of the Jews," this genocidal rhetoric, which clearly is an obstacle to peace and reconciliation, was not reported by the newspaper.

Other inconvenient information is buried. After Israeli teenage thugs severely beat an Arab boy, the story made the front page of the newspaper not once, but twice, and journalists raised questions about the morality of Israeli society as a whole. But when Palestinian teens perpetrated a bloodcurdling murder of 5 members of the Fogel family, including a 3-month-old infant, the story didn't make the front page of the newspaper once, and reporters didn't ask about the morals of Palestinian society.

SKEWING HEADLINES AND PHOTOS

Alongside a news story about a 19-year-old Israeli soldier murdered in his sleep, The New York Times opted to redirect the focus to Palestinian suffering by featuring a photograph of the Palestinian killer's mother. Although the newspaper's public editor later admitted that the photo was the "wrong" choice, other editors decided to continue to highlight the problematic photo at the top of the story.

CAMERA's six-month study of New York Times reporting found that the newspaper’s coverage of violence was marked by a double standard that highlighted Israeli attacks and de-emphasized Palestinian ones. Twelve headlines explicitly mentioned Palestinian fatalities; none explicitly referred to Israeli deaths, even though 14 Israelis were killed during the study period.

A 2013 report about the Palestinian killing of an Israeli civilian and the subsequent Israeli killing of a Palestinian terrorist was assigned the lopsided headline, "Israeli Airstrike Kills Palestinian in Gaza." The headline was later changed under pressure. But the featured photo illustrating the story was, and still is, a sorrowful picture of the Palestinian terrorist's mother in mourning.

Such errors, omissions and distortions, large and small, characterize The New York Times' biased handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Would a great newspaper slant the news about Israel? No. But The New York Times does.


Why is The New York Times Silent
When Hamas Says to Harvest the Skulls of the Jews?


TAKE ACTION

Contact The New York Times at 212.556.1234 or publisher@nytimes.com and tell publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to report the full truth.
Spread the word. Tell friends, family and elected officials: If they want the facts about Israel and its neighbors, don’t count on The New York Times.
Support CAMERA’s campaign to end bias at The New York Times by clicking the CONTRIBUTE button below.




On the donation page, type "NYTimes" in the Donation Instructions field.
• Hamas TV tells Palestinians it is an "act of worship" to "harvest the skulls of the Jews," and the Times is silent.

• A Hamas official publicly declares it the duty of every Muslim to wage Jihad "to annihilate" the Jews of Israel, and the Times is silent.

• Hamas TV reenacts deadly stabbing and shooting of Jews, boasting of thousands of lethal attacks and vowing "this will never stop," and the Times is silent.

• The New York Times, the self-proclaimed "paper of record," habitually ignores genocidal anti-Jewish rhetoric.

• Such violent incitement whether expressed by Palestinian officials or in Palestinian media is newsworthy and a principle obstacle to peace.

This biased coverage is part of a pattern. CAMERA's six-month study of New York Times coverage found the newspaper consistently downplaying Israeli views and amplifying, or even promoting, Palestinian perspectives. Month after month, the newspaper obscured Palestinian attacks and Israeli deaths, diverting readers' attention instead to Palestinian casualties and acts of non-lethal vandalism by Israelis.

In light of such repeated breaches of journalistic ethics, CAMERA is launching a campaign to remind The New York Times that its readers expect more — and deserve more. On this page you can find contact information for the newspaper, information on how to help with our campaign, images of our advertisements, which have appeared in The New York PostThe Wall Street Journal, The Metro and AM New York, and detailed information about Times coverage that you can reach by following the hyperlinks across the page.



Why Did The New York Times
Whitewash This Girl’s Killer?

The suffering of Malki Roth and the agony of her family are not even a footnote in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story, which romanticizes what the author describes as "resistance" against Israel from the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh.
In August 2001, one of the town's "resistance activists" helped plan and execute a bombing attack on a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. The attack ended the life of 15-year-old Malki and 14 others, wounding 130.
TAKE ACTION

Contact The New York Times at 212.556.1234 or publisher@nytimes.com and tell publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to report the full truth.
Spread the word. Tell friends, family and elected officials: If they want the facts about Israel and its neighbors, don’t count on The New York Times.
Support CAMERA’s campaign to end bias at The New York Times by clicking the CONTRIBUTE button below.
To learn more about Malki, visit kerenmalki.org, the foundation created in her memory.



On the donation page, type "NYTimes" in the Donation Instructions field.
The brutal act is glossed over in just a few words, the victims left nameless and faceless. Terrorism — although the author avoids that word altogether, preferring gentler euphemisms throughout the piece — is cast as legitimate, even if not particularly effective.

The same article also glorifies stone throwing, but conceals from readers the fact that this type of "resistance," too, has killed innocents.

Malki's mother protested in a letter to The Times. She pointed out that Ahlam Tamimi, the Nabi Saleh resident who was a key figure in the attack and helped select the target, was presented in The New York Times as doing nothing more than "escorting" the suicide bomber.

"For a mother to bury her loving, gentle child is torture," she concluded. "To watch the murderer walk triumphantly free and enjoy life rubs salt into that wound every day. But to see the NY Times gloss over this travesty of justice with a cover story that showcases this woman's many admirers in Nabi Saleh – that is journalism of the most amoral sort. You ought to be ashamed of it."

The Times didn't see fit to print the letter.
A few months later, the newspaper did it again. Another front page story romanticized Palestinian stone-throwers. It was another story that ignored the Israeli civilian victims who were maimed and killed as a result of such violence.
This biased coverage is part of a pattern. CAMERA's six-month study of New York Times coverage found the newspaper consistently downplaying Israeli views and amplifying, or even promoting, Palestinian perspectives. Month after month, the newspaper obscured Palestinian attacks and Israeli deaths, diverting readers' attention instead to Palestinian casualties and acts of non-lethal vandalism by Israelis.
In light of such repeated breaches of journalistic ethics, CAMERA is launching a campaign to remind The New York Times that its readers expect more — and deserve more. On this page you can find contact information for the newspaper, information on how to help with our campaign, images of our advertisement, which have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Metro and AM New York, and detailed information about Times coverage that you can reach by following the hyperlinks across the page.















A brief video documenting examples of egregious anti-Israel editorializing in The New York Times news pages.

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