Attention All Journalists, PR Practitioners And Especially The New York Times: Take Time To Check Your Facts

Public relations people can learn three valuable lessons from the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel:

• Never release any information to the media from a client before checking to make certain it’s accurate.

• Journalists will often find fault with information a PR person provides, even though they often are too quick to publish information without checking on its accuracy.

• Many journalists have an agenda.

While all three bullets are important, it is the last two that this essay is mostly about. 

Over the years, I have written about how the New York Times editors and journalists have slanted their reporting to favor what Palestinian say and denigrate what Israeli spokespeople say. 

This has been done several different ways:

• By its use of multiple photos, showing “Palestinians suffering,” compared to those showing suffering to Israelis after a Palestinian terrorist attack.

• Over the years by publishing many more guest opinion columns by Palestinian supporters than by those who support Israel.

• By its supposedly impartial news articles, which always plays down the Israeli suffering, while giving multiple quotes in the articles to Palestinians.

• And by it’s placement of stories. (More on this later.)

Years ago, when Israel was fighting for its right to exist, the reporting was must more accurate than it has been since Israel has consistently successfully defended itself against attacks by Palestinians and other Arab countries.

That is no longer true, and the current coverage of the New York Times hostilities in Gaza again proves my contention that the Times is not an honest broker when it is reporting is about Israelis and Palestinians.

When Israeli kibbutzim and a music festival was attacked by terrorists, the Times couldn’t make up its mind if the word “terrorists” should be used. First it was, then it wasn’t, then it was, etc. Even leftists news organizations like MSNBC referred to the attacks as “terrorists.”  

While the Times has been criticized for its slanted reporting during the current situation in Israel and Gaza, perhaps the most harmful to Israel was the erroneous reporting that occurred after a hospital in Gaza was supposedly hit by an Isreali rocket on Oct. 17.

As soon as the news broke much of the Western press joined the Arab media condemning Israel for attacking a hospital and killing hundreds, without checking the facts, which subsequently showed that the missile was fired by a pro-Palestinian terror entity and that the rocket circled back after it misfired and fell into a nearby parking lot. The cause of the ensuing explosion is not known, but is believed to be from the accelerant of the faulty rocket. 

Israeli spokespersons immediately denied that they fired the rocket. But Western news outlets, led by the New York Times, without checking the facts, immediately blamed Israel with a headline reading, “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.” As new information emerged the Times corrected the headline, but by then the damage to Israel’s reputation was already done.

The Times knee-jerk reaction to believe whatever Palestinian spokesmen say is not unusual. But in this case Times journalists added insult to injury by its placement of stories in its Oct.19 edition, which should be studied in all journalism classes as a prime example of slanted journalism.

The front page of the Oct. 19 edition contained stories about free speech at Harvard, about a social worker who lives in a car and a suspect who admitted that he killed a senior on a high school trip to Aruba more than a decade ago.

In that edition the Times ran a story headlined, “Early Intelligence Links Palestinians to Blast,” with a picture captioned "Siffting through debris near the hospital. A preliminary analysis indicated Islamic Jihad caused the blast, officials say.”

One would think that because of the Times factually wrong headline about the situation, it would run what was largely a corrective article on page one, instead of the three stories that under no circumstances could be considered more important than the corrective article. But no. Instead of page one, that article was placed on page nine.

Also rushing to be the first with factually incorrect news was the Associated Press, which reported in a tweet, “BREAKING: The Gaza Health Ministry says at least 500 people killed in an explosion at a hospital    that it says was caused by an Isreali airstrike.” AP subsequently reported in a tweet that Israel said that the rocket was fired by Palestinians. But like the initial Times headline, the damage to Israel was already done.

On Oct. 18, even Al Jazeera, no friend to Israel, said that it was not able to independently verify the Palestinian accounts and gave five paragraphs to Israel‘s denial of firing the rocket. And on Oct. 19, Reuters reported that “A video of a missile launch captured in Gaza that dates to at least August 2022 has been falsely shared as footage showing a missile that struck Gaza’s Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in October 2023.”

In their Oct. 20 editions both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal published articles about how difficult it is to cover what is happening in Gaza because of a lack of journalists on the ground. But nevertheless, the assertion that an Israeli bomb had destroyed the hospital was reported as a fact by both publications because a Hamas spokesperson said so, despite immediate denials by Israeli spokespersons, which were later proved to be true.

It’s obvious from the coverage that when Israeli spokespersons and Palestinian spokesmen disagree about the facts of a situation, the Palestinians are assumed to be more truthful than the Israelis by important Western media news sources. History shows that the Palestinians side of a story is initially accepted as the truth, no matter what the Israeli says, until facts show that the media has been lied to by Palestinians, as happens time after time.

There are important take-a-ways from the hospital non-bombing by Israel episode: As I have said over the years, the New York Times reporting about the Israel-Palestinian situation should not be taken as iron-clad facts. It’s usually based on one side’s comments – the Palestinians.

And for PR people, if you don’t want to have to issue corrective information regarding a client, make certain that everything you disseminated is factually correct.