Hamas was accused of committing sexual violence...a new scandal rocks the New York Times

Controversy within the New York Times newsroom over the bias of its coverage of Israel (Al Jazeera)

Washington

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On the front page of its paper edition of yesterday's Friday issue, The New York Times referred to the killing of more than 100 Palestinians without mentioning that the Israeli army opened fire on them, in a report from its correspondents from the occupied city of Jerusalem.

The report's title stated, "Dozens killed in Gaza, after desperate crowd gathered around food trucks, accounts of stampedes and Israeli gunfire."

The New York Times wrote a Haiku to avoid saying Israel massacres Palestinians that they're deliberately starving in Gaza.

pic.twitter.com/RGeIKA3vtH

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) March 1, 2024

This prompted international affairs expert and follower of the American media, Asal Rad, to tweet on the X platform attacking the newspaper, saying, “The New York Times wrote riddles to avoid saying that Israel is slaughtering the Palestinians and that they are deliberately starving in Gaza.”

Although the New York Times enjoys wide credibility and appreciation inside and outside the United States, it makes an exception when it comes to covering the Israeli aggression on Gaza, which reduces its credibility and causes it a lot of damage.

Internal investigation

One of the most prominent things that can be placed in the category of journalistic scandals is what was recently revealed about the newspaper starting an investigation following the leak of a report on its coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, amid a heated internal debate within the newspaper, about its coverage of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, and the issues related to it.

The investigation began after The Intercept website revealed disagreements over an episode that had not yet been broadcast on its digital podcast platform (The Daily) about the allegation that the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” used sexual violence as a weapon.

The investigation is underway after a leak about the reasons for not broadcasting the episode, and the investigation is led by Charlotte Berndt, director of policy and internal investigations at the newspaper.

The podcast episode (25 minutes long) based on an investigation conducted by the newspaper and published at the end of December was scheduled to be broadcast.

Three people participated in the investigation: Jeffrey Gittleman, the newspaper’s correspondent who previously won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, in addition to two Israeli collaborators, Adam Sela and Anat Schwartz.

However, the newspaper decided not to broadcast the episode due to internal anger and controversy among the newspaper’s journalists and editors over the content of the report and the credibility of many of its parts.

The report, which was published in the newspaper on December 28 under the title “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Used Sexual Violence as a Weapon on October 7,” had a significant impact on the sympathy of a large percentage of Americans with the Israeli narrative, against the backdrop of allegations that Hamas committed sexual assault. And the rape of Israeli women during the “Al-Aqsa Flood.”

Inside the New York Times newsroom, the report was met with praise from managing editors, but at the same time, skepticism from other journalists at the newspaper.

For its part, Hamas denies all these accusations.

Schwartz is not a journalist

Many observers questioned the validity and credibility of the New York Times report when it was published, and the revelation of the identity of Anat Schwartz, a collaborator with the newspaper, and one of the three authors of the report, was like a bomb that exploded in the face of the New York Times.

The Daily Beast website revealed a few days ago that Schwartz “liked several posts on the X platform that indicated a pro-Israel bias, including a post calling on Israel to turn the Gaza Strip into a slaughterhouse.”

Expressing a clear, biased political position constitutes a violation of the New York Times' social media policy, and the newspaper has therefore halted its cooperation with Anat and stated that it is "currently reviewing the matter."

Schwartz also liked a tweet on the

New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhodes said in a statement, “We are aware that a freelance journalist in Israel who worked for The Times has liked several social media posts. These likes are unacceptable violations of our organization’s policy. We are currently reviewing the matter.”

It was later revealed that Schwartz is not primarily a journalist, and does not have experience that qualifies her to work with one of the most important newspapers in the world on a subject of such importance and sensitivity. Rather, she works as a director and screenwriter for the Israeli public broadcaster Kan, and had previously joined the Israeli Air Force intelligence service.

Schwartz began working for The Times in November, focusing her stories on Israel's response to the October 7 attacks, which heightened doubts about the newspaper's standards in hiring collaborators with no journalistic experience.

A woman holds a satirical copy of the New York Times during a march in support of the Palestinians in New York (Reuters)

Podcast episode

According to the Intercept website, a new script was drafted in preparation for the podcast episode, “and stated significant caveats, allowed for uncertainty, and asked open-ended questions that were absent from the original report, which presented its findings as conclusive evidence of the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war by Hamas.”

The newspaper faced a dilemma: if the episode was broadcast, the original published report, from which the podcast took its episode, would be questioned, and if the episode was modified to be consistent with the texts of the report, it would risk repeating the errors contained in the report.

The report, which the newspaper said was the result of a two-month investigation, was based on interviews with soldiers and medics who reported that they saw dozens of corpses of women with “signs of abuse in their genital areas.”

But critics of the story pointed out that the rapid burial of the victims prevented authorities from collecting any forensic evidence that would confirm the gang rape allegations.

Israel did not provide any evidence for this claim, and said that the investigation would be “disrespectful to the dead.”

The Times was forced to add a correction to the controversial report in which Anat participated, clarifying that the Israeli police “rely primarily on witness testimony, not on autopsies or forensic evidence.”

Double standards

“As a veteran journalist, I know there are plenty of award-winning reporters vying to write for the New York Times,” wrote Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. “But a filmmaker with no journalistic experience at all gets her reporting on the front page of the New York Times.” "The most controversial issues in the world, something is not right."

It is worth noting that writer Jazmine Hughes was forced to leave the newspaper after signing a public letter opposing the war between Israel and Hamas, which she considered “an Israeli attempt to carry out genocide against the Palestinian people.”

In her resignation letter, Hughes criticized media coverage of the war, including a newspaper editorial that supported Israel's right to defend itself militarily while urging it to protect civilians.

The newspaper also previously terminated its contract with Hussam Salem, an independent Palestinian photojournalist, in October 2022 due to posts on social media in which he “expressed his support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.”

Source: Al Jazeera