The Internet and social media has sucked all profit from the journalism industry, felling outlet after outlet, not to mention local papers. Yet, the New York Times has thrived. That sucks, because no one, including me, will ever have a media job again. But it’s also genuinely terrible for the world. Even in comparison to the Washington Post, the Times truly makes the world worse. I’ve never understood why; D.C. is a far worse city with far worse people than New York (obviously I mean political D.C.) But the Post was always better on criminal justice issues, even employing the criminal justice journalist Radley Balko on its op-ed page for years.
And they’ve been marginally better on Israel-Palestine, like conducting reporting that showed no evidence of a Hamas Death Star under Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. And as far as I know, they haven’t published any perverse rape fetish porn like the Times’ absurd “Screams Without Words” rape story, by now fully debunked. (Usual caveat: I have no proof that no one was raped on October 7th, so that’s not what I’m claiming. But basically every piece of evidence in that story fell apart).
It fell apart after outlets like the Intercept and Electronic Intifada had the guts to risk being labeled anti-semitic rape apologists and conduct investigations. The Intercept recently laid off like half its staff. It is not a good sign.
Getting back to the Times. The amply paid editors have shoved their Gaza coverage like 10 stories off of the front page. It literally sits below a story titled, “The Burden of Being Senator Bob Menendez’s Famous Children.” OK if it were like … “What to Know About Sex after 70” I’d get it as click bait but there is not a single person on earth who gives a fuck about Senator Bob Menendez’s children. Bob Menendez probably didn’t click.
And the two stories about starvation in Gaza are framed as a masterclass of passive voice and other forms of obfuscation.
We know why more aid is not getting into Gaza. It’s blocked by the IDF and freakish protestors at the border. It’s not the “complex land route.” Palestinians are bearing the brunt of fighting at Al-Shifa hospital continues? Who attacked the hospital? It’s headlines designed to make the average reader scan past and assume Palestinians are either suffering an unknown starvation event or the travails of the “land route” or that they’re caught in the crossfire between two equally powerful forces. How many headlines I wonder contain the words Israel as an actor (that aren’t just “Israel says”). I bet not a lot!
But this is just subtle and gentle enough of a manipulation to fit the tastes of the Times’ liberal readers, and therefor go unnoticed. In comparison, Israel’s inept propaganda is SO over the top. I mean, on the one hand, it did its job. Now every pundit has to refer to “sadistic mass rape” by Hamas when they discuss the war. But, sane people with brains were able to recalibrate their position thanks to the debunking. Friends went from “weaponized mass rape is horrific, but it doesn’t excuse a genocide” to my position that there’s no evidence rape didn’t occur, but that this story was racist propaganda.
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