The New York Times vs. Israel
11th July 2014
The New York Times issued a correction today to fix a demonstrably false editorial that claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent “days of near silence” before condemning the murder of Arab teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Netanyahu had, in fact, called the killing an “abominable murder,” and on the day of the killing issued a statement instructing his minister for internal security to investigate the crime. Three Israeli suspects were arrested and have since confessed to the murder.
Even with a correction, the editorial in question was a mess from the top down. The New Republic has a good rundown of other egregious errors and misleading points that won’t be getting much-needed corrections. It’s likely that the editorial page was simply relying on the news side to feed its preconceived biases (though one story had already reported on Netanyahu’s comments), which is a mistake considering the NYT’s reporting exhibits absolutely no journalistic standards when it comes to the topic.