Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Normal people use The New York Times to line the bottom of a bird cage or to housetrain a dog.

Left-wing progressives, however, prefer to read it as news.

The problem is that lefties demand certain kinds of stories. So when supply outstrips demand, the editorial team at The New York Times are left with no option but to make stuff up.

And so it was that, on October 17, The New York Times published all the lies not fit to print.

News of an explosion at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was plastered across their front page with the headline:

“Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.”

The headline was above an image that showed a building ripped apart by an explosion.

There were two problems with this story.

Firstly, the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital was not caused by Israel.

Secondly, the highly emotive image of the ‘hospital’ that had been blown to smithereens was not, in fact, the Al-Alhli Hospital where the explosion had occurred.

On the New York Times website, they ran the same headline, but with this image:

The problem is that the emotive image of the distraught woman holding her child was not from the Al-Alhli Hospital either.

So how did The New York Times get it so very wrong?

The paper’s editor this week admitted that journalists at the Times may have:

“… relied too heavily on claims by Hamas.”

What? If reporters can’t trust baby-beheading terrorists, who can they trust?

Fake News

The New York Times editor explained:

“The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.”

Or, to put that in English:

‘The report was complete BS, but we believed it because we wanted to believe it, and we knew our readers would want to believe it too.’

The editor said executives at The New York Times were:

“examining procedures… to determine what additional safeguards (against false reporting) may be warranted.”

The current procedure at the Times seems to be:

1. Blame the Jews
2. Check the Facts
3. Ignore the Facts
4. Blame the Jews

But since they are now “examining procedures”, can I humbly suggest that maybe they don’t report the word of mass-murdering terrorists as fact?

Put that in your procedure manual, New York Times!

Taking Sides

Did The New York Times really imagine that starting an article with, ‘according to Hamas officials…’ would not end badly?

Of course, in all likelihood, it was neither a mistake nor a procedural failure. It’s more likely that The New York Times has just said the quiet part out loud — they are a mouthpiece for Hamas.

The New York Times couldn’t even apologise. There was no sorry. Just this mealy-mouthed explanation:

“The report left readers with the wrong impression.”

Wrong impression? Well, sure. You can see how easily that could happen.

You pick up The New York Times and start reading about a Palestinian Islamic Jihadi missile hitting a parking lot and get the impression that an Israeli Defence Force missile hit a hospital.

My bad. I got the wrong impression!

Unfortunately, the damage this so-called “wrong impression” caused Israel was very real.

There were anti-Israeli protests around the world. Israel was denounced. Jews were threatened. A meeting between Joe Biden and Arab world leaders was cancelled.

The New York Times, a former newspaper, should be ashamed.

___

Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.

Subscribe to his Substack here for daily witty commentary.