According to a report, senior editors at the New York Times brushed aside staff concerns that the paper was accepting Hamas’ version of the deadly hospital explosion in Gaza, which blamed Israel for the attack.
Immediately after the Oct. 17 hospital explosion, the main headline on the Times website appeared: “Israeli attack kills hundreds in hospital, Palestinians say.”
The Times also ran a subheader that read: “At least 500 dead in Gaza attack as Biden prepares to visit Israel.”
Internal Slack messages obtained by Vanity Fair show that junior editors and reporters at the Gray Lady urged the unnamed editors-in-chief to “secure” the paper’s account.
According to Vanity Fair, the framing sparked an internal debate in the newsroom on the virtual Slack channel titled “#israel-briefings.”
However, those calls were eventually rejected, Vanity Fair reported.
On Monday, the Times admitted that it had “relied too heavily on claims made by Hamas and did not make it clear that these claims could not be immediately verified.”
The New York Times’ coverage of the Oct. 17 explosion at a hospital in Gaza has drawn strong criticism. The Times eventually changed the story’s headline after admitting that it relied “too heavily” on Hamas statements.
The internal dispute over the original framing of the story began when a senior news editor went to the company’s internal Slack channel and tagged two other editors on the breaking news team and wrote: “I think we can be a little more direct in leadership: According to information.” “At least 500 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday,” Palestinian authorities said.
One of the flagged editors reportedly wrote back: “You don’t want to hedge it?”
The Times published a rare editor’s note on Monday acknowledging its mistake.
A young reporter contributing stories from Jerusalem to the Times joined the Slack conversation and wrote: “Better secure.”
“We are doing a write-up,” the senior news editor reportedly replied.
A few minutes later, a senior editor in the international newsroom wrote: “The [headline] on the [home page] goes way too far.”
Another senior editor asked, “How is it different from Blog-Hed?” — a reference to the Times’ live blog.
“Both say that an Israeli attack kills Palestinians,” the second senior editor wrote.
Hamas’s claim that Israel was responsible for the explosion, as well as its claim that at least 500 people were killed, have been questioned.AP
“I think we can’t just hang attribution of something so big on one source without trying to verify it,” the international editor said.
“And then slap it on top [home page]. Putting names at the end doesn’t protect us when we’re burned and wrong.”
Immediately after the explosion, Israel denied having anything to do with the incident.
According to digital journalism news site NiemanLab, the reference to the “Israeli attack” in the top headline was removed nearly two hours later, on the afternoon of October 17.
Subsequent investigations and analysis of the explosion site and the crater left by the blast source appeared to support Israel’s claim that it was a stray Palestinian missile that set off the tragic chain of events.
The Times was one of several media outlets criticized for its coverage of the Gaza explosion.Paul Martinka
The United States, Canada and France have publicly absolved Israel of blame for the deaths at Al Ahli Arab Hospital.
The Times came under heavy criticism for amplifying Palestinian claims about Israel’s responsibility and the inflated death toll.
Hamas, the Gaza-based terrorist group that launched a surprise cross-border attack on Israel on October 7 that left at least 1,400 civilians and soldiers dead and thousands more injured, initially claimed at least 500 had been killed, but Western intelligence agencies believe otherwise the actual death toll is likely to be much lower.
Hamas has provided no evidence to support its claim that it was an Israeli rocket fired at the hospital.
Analysis of the blast site suggests that it was a stray Palestinian rocket that caused the explosion. AFP via Getty Images
In a rare editor’s note, the Times wrote that it “attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the explosion.”
The newspaper said it regretted that it had “given readers a false impression of what was known and how credible the account was.”
The Post has reached out to the Times for comment.