Social Media Watchdogs Shame New York Times for ‘Rank Dishonesty,’ ‘Statistical Manipulation’

An encouraging development in the Israel-Hamas war is that the online pro-Israel press watchdogs finally seem to be getting the...

The post Social Media Watchdogs Shame New York Times for ‘Rank Dishonesty,’ ‘Statistical Manipulation’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

An encouraging development in the Israel-Hamas war is that the online pro-Israel press watchdogs finally seem to be getting the upper hand over the New York Times.

A few recent examples tell the story.

A New York Times Sunday opinion article by Megan Stack, headlined “Don’t Turn Away From the Charges of Genocide Against Israel,” was authoritatively debunked by Shany Mor in a thread on X that has attracted nearly a quarter-million views.

Mor faulted Stack’s piece for “rank dishonesty,” noting that it “truncated” the “legal definition of genocide,” omitting “a crucial part of the definition.” Mor also faults the Stack piece for misquoting Israelis to depict them, falsely, as having genocidal intent.

More concludes: “Rather than trawling the internet for truncated quotes, we might want to investigate why so many of our self-appointed humanitarians have spent decades fantasizing about the day when they could drag the Jews in before a tribunal to face the charge of being the real Nazis.”

A column by Nicholas Kristof that also ran in the Sunday New York Times got a similar online dragging, and deservedly so, from the X account of Salo Aizenberg. Aizenberg noticed that in a comparison between American bombing Iraq and Israel bombing Gaza, Kristof used a comparison that started in 2004 rather than 2003. “To push fake narrative one must misrepresent,” Aizenberg wrote, in a post that attracted more than 380,000 views. “If one seeks to compare US & Israel bombing numbers to draw conclusions one MUST begin with the start of each invasion. Anything else is grossly misleading.” Aizenberg described the Kristof column as “statistical manipulation and a “major misrepresentation.”

The Kristof column conceded, “The attack on Oct. 7 was particularly savage, and no doubt my perspective would be different if I had been on the receiving end.” No doubt!

The same Kristof column included the lie: “Negotiation and exchanges have done a much better job liberating hostages than bombardment. So far Israeli troops have killed more hostages than they have freed (one, at the beginning of the war).” That same false claim was made in the Stack piece: “Israel has rescued only a single hostage — and Israeli soldiers shot dead three Israeli hostages who were waving a white flag and begging for rescue, later explaining they mistook them for Palestinians. Almost all of the 110 Israeli hostages who’ve made it home were released by truce, negotiation and prisoner exchange.”

Neither Stack nor Kristof acknowledge that it was military pressure applied by Israel that led to the release of the hostages, who included not only Israelis but also Thai, Russian, and Filipino nationals. All of the hostages, not merely one, were freed by Israeli troops. It was only after Israel started bombing Gaza that Hamas became willing to negotiate and return any of the hostages.

A senior research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, Gilead Ini, called out the Times for a news article in which the Times described a “100 days” tape on a soccer player’s wrist as referring “to the start of the war between Israel and Hamas” rather than to the days of captivity for Israeli hostages. Ini described the Times phrase as a “misrepresentation” and “the journalistic equivalent of callously tearing down a hostage poster.” Ini’s post on X garnered nearly 36,000 views.

Another social media post by Camera’s Ini mocked the Times for a subheadline about a 72 to 11 vote in which the Senate overwhelmingly rejected a Bernie Sanders-Rand Paul extreme amendment aimed at hassling Israel. Sanders is an independent and Paul is a Republican. The Times subheadline claimed “the debate highlighted Democratic resistance to providing unfettered aid,” but actually the vote highlighted bipartisan support for Israel in responding to a horrible terrorist attack. Ini’s tweet of the Times headline asked, “Is that what it highlighted?” alongside a list of the many Democratic senators who opposed the Sanders-Paul measure. The tweet attracted more than 11,000 views.

Back in 2017, when the New York Times eliminated the “public editor” watchdog position that it had created after a scandal involving a reporter who fabricated material, the newspaper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., explained, “today, our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be.”

At the time, I was skeptical of that explanation. But today’s pro-Israel, pro-accuracy Internet watchdogs are well on the way to proving Sulzberger correct.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

The post Social Media Watchdogs Shame New York Times for ‘Rank Dishonesty,’ ‘Statistical Manipulation’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.