Surprise? NY Times Abandons Any Pretense of Even-handedness in Attack on Jerusalem Housing Plan - by Ira Stoll

The cherry-picked source selection isn’t the only way the Times news article is tilted. Consider the online subheadline: “The announcement by Prime Minister Netanyahu of 6,200 homes in a contested area was seen as an effort to solidify right-wing support.” To Israel’s enemies, every square inch of the country is “contested,” so the word “contested” doesn’t really add much. “Was seen” is classic Times passive voice. “Was seen” by whom? The Times headline doesn’t say, but the fact that it is the headline makes one suspect that it “was seen” that way by Times news editors, in which case, why don’t they just stop hiding behind “was seen” and just come right out and say it? I’m tempted to top this column with, “New York Times headline was seen as latest example of the newspaper’s egregious bias against Israel’s elected prime minister.”

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
23 February '20..

The New York Times has abandoned even the pretense of evenhandedness when it comes to its news coverage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Times news article about Netanyahu’s announcement of plans for new housing in Jerusalem includes quotes reacting to the news from three sources.

“The veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the move,” the Times reports, adding a quote from Erekat.

Then, from the Israeli side, the Times included two more reactions.

One, from “Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim,” which the Times describes as “a group advocating an equitable arrangement between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem,” uses the word “destructive.”

A second, from Peace Now, described the building plan as “state suicide.”

To find anyone welcoming or praising Netanyahu’s announcement, you’d have to resort to reading a different newspaper than the New York Times.

The result is to give Times readers a distorted, inaccurate, misleading view of what is happening in Israel. If you read the New York Times, you’d be shocked and surprised that Netanyahu keeps getting reelected, because the Times news articles (and opinion pages, too) are full of people criticizing Netanyahu and talking about how terrible whatever he is doing is. Yet somehow, Netanyahu and his party keep getting lots and lots of votes from people whose voices the Times doesn’t routinely deem worthy of including.

(Continue to Full Column)

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post.