It isn’t often that The New York Times runs an editorial—the official voice of the paper—that runs more than 2,000 words. But that’s what happened last week and its topic was anti-Semitism. It was a remarkable read.
Titled, “Anti-Semitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses,” it offered a detailed and unapologetic expansion of what its title proclaimed, giving examples and decrying excuse makers.
The unexpected editorial offered a lamentable litany of recent months’ attacks on Jews: in Chicago, Washington, DC, Boulder, and Pennsylvania. To have mentioned anti-Semitic attacks going back a year or two longer would have required another 2,000 words, at least.
“On a per capita basis,” the editorial explained, “Jews face far greater risks of being victims of hate crimes than members of any other demographic groups.” And it noted that shuls and Jewish schools have felt the need to post armed guards outside their doors.
The editorial notes, correctly, that Jew-hatred is endemic on both the political right and left, and that “the bipartisan nature of the problem has helped make it distinct” as a hatred.
“Progressives,” it conceded, “reject many other forms of hate even as some tolerate anti-Semitism.”
The Times asked its readers to “consider the double standard that leads to a fixation on Israel’s human rights record,” while “the records of China, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela or almost any other country” are not protested on campuses. And to ponder how “often left-leaning groups suggest that the world’s one Jewish state should not exist and express admiration for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis—Iran-backed terrorist groups that brag about murdering Jews.”
The paper poignantly observes how “university leaders have often felt uncomfortable decrying anti-Semitism without also decrying Islamophobia,” while, after the September 11 attacks, “they did not feel the need to rebuke both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.”
Telling, indeed.
Credit is due to The Times editorial staff, and is duly given.
At the same time, though, the paper seems oblivious to the fact that its reportage has repeatedly, even if unintentionally, supplied oxygen to the fire of anti-Semitism.
In a paper published last year by Taylor & Francis, one of the world’s leading academic publishers, two researchers present serious errors, corrections and omissions in the New York Times coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Even when corrections were made, they were often “late, vague and evasive.”
“Omissions created false context and reporting,” the writers explain in a synopsis of their findings, “and lacked transparency.” Among the explored case studies and issues were the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion, the number of civilian casualties, misquoting of Israeli leaders and employing questionable (or worse) journalists, not to mention reliance on Hamas ministries’ claims. “The findings,” the authors contend, “reveal misleading repeated errors, inadequate corrections, significant omissions, and poor editorial supervision.”
For one example, think of the innumerable times over the past many months that The Times claimed Gazans are suffering severe starvation. It was a falsehood each time.
Another 2024 study, this one by a Yale University professor and published by Social Science Research Network, analyzed 1,561 articles and found that The Times’ coverage of the Israel-Hamas war overwhelmingly shaped a narrative that generates sympathy for Palestinians while downplaying Israeli suffering and Hamas’ responsibility for the conflict.
Reporters (and headline writers, who often skew their output to emphasize anti-Israel sentiment even when the articles that follow are balanced; and all-important photo editors, whose choices often betray bias against Israel) need to realize their emphasizing certain things and de-emphathizing others can carry a toll.
Such reportage and headlines and photo choices might seem like minor breaches of journalistic ethics, but they can subtly plant seeds in readers’ minds that grow into noxious weeds.
As the historian Conor Cruise O’Brien noted, “Anti-Semitism is a light sleeper.” It doesn’t take very much to awaken the fiend.
Appended to the recent Times editorial condemning anti-Semitism was the following note:
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
Suggestion to the editorial board: Perhaps consider sending a memo to all those in the newsroom, recommending that they carefully read your editorial and internalize your words.
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