Yesterday's NYT lede framing the Israeli army's battle against COVID-19 as a break from its habit of "killing people" was a psychological tell.
Today's piece on Palestinian payments to prisoners is everything wrong with the paper's coverage over time. It's this balanced:
Today's piece on Palestinian payments to prisoners is everything wrong with the paper's coverage over time. It's this balanced:
That lopsided paragraph mirrors how the article itself handles the story. A quick-and-dirty breakdown of what it shares with readers about payments to those who violently attack Israelis. 140 words toward the top of Palestinian views, 85 sunken words for Israeli views.
The first quotation from the Israeli side is in paragraph 19 out of 21 total. The only other Israeli quote is in paragraph 20. The sterile quote is from a bureaucratic army statement.
This follows quotes much earlier in the story from Palestinian signs and three Palestinians.
This follows quotes much earlier in the story from Palestinian signs and three Palestinians.
Could the reporters not find a single Israeli individual to give a human view on how Israelis see the payments? A parent of a child who was murdered in a terror attack and who get new salt in their unimaginable wounds each month when the killers are rewarded with cash? Just one?
It shouldn't be difficult. For anyone who follows the issue it would take hardly a second to come up with the name of, to give one of too many examples, @arnoldroth, whose tireless efforts for justice in the slaying of his daughter are heroic.
Here's the current version of the article: archive.is/kpjPs#selectio…
I archived it. But who am I kidding. Nothing has been updated. Nothing added. Not 1 statistic about the amount of money that has gone to people who killed civilians. Not 1 anecdote about the type of murder that helps explain why Israelis are upset by payments to terrorists. 0.
