The New York Times’ coverage of the first months of the war in Gaza displayed a clear bias against Israel by downplaying the country’s casualties while minimizing Hamas’ role in sustaining the conflict, a new study found.
A review of the Times’ 1,559 articles published between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024, showed that the Times often omitted deaths sustained by the Jewish military while looking the other way on ongoing Palestinian violence once the war began after Hamas terrorists’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Edieal Pinker of the Yale School of Management who published his findings in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism academic journal said the Times’ coverage was clearly skewed against Israel.
“Drawing on a corpus of 1,559 news articles I document a dominant narrative consistent with a framing that assigns near-exclusive agency and responsibility to Israel while diminishing Hamas’s role in sustaining the conflict,” Pinker wrote.
“It describes Hamas’s October 7 attack followed by Israeli military violence and mounting Palestinian casualties, while largely omitting Israeli casualties post-October 7, Hamas fighter casualties, and post-October 7 Palestinian violence.
“Personal accounts of Palestinian suffering appear two out of every three days, while comparable accounts of Israeli suffering rarely appear,” he said.
A total of 437 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the Jewish state began its offensive in Gaza, with dozens of police officers and civilians also killed and injured in terror attacks throughout the war, according to Israeli officials.
Pinker argued that the Times’ coverage ultimately portrayed Israel as the “sole aggressor” in the conflict while Palestinians were depicted as “passive victims.”
The Times rejected Pinker’s characterization of its reporting and had previously stated that it “has covered this war with more rigor than virtually any other US news organization, reporting on the conflict from all angles.
“We remain open to good-faith disagreement but will not change our coverage to buttress entrenched perspectives,” the outlet said during the report’s initial findings last year.
The Times did not respond to a Post request for comment Sunday.
After Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which left more than 1,200 people dead and another 251 kidnapped, Israel launched a full-scale war aimed at rescuing the hostages and eliminating Hamas.
The Jewish state has been repeatedly criticized for the way it has conducted the war through mass bombardments that have damaged and destroyed the vast majority of Gaza.
The war has resulted in the deaths of more than 73,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians in its death totals.
While the number has yet to be officially verified because of the ongoing war, United Nations agencies and human-rights groups estimate that at least half the death toll is made up by women and children.
Israeli officials have said its military only targets terrorists and makes efforts to warn civilians to get out of the area before an attack.
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