- cross-posted to:
- world
- cross-posted to:
- world
The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.
The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians, who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.
Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups.
I know content analysis or discourse analysis would find this outlet is very selective with words like “massacre” or active terms liks “kills”. That’s just its bias.
But trying to fudge objective reality, like a refugee camp being a refugee camp or an occupation being an occupation, is next level and falls under propaganda.
all media is propaganda. the question is for whom
I know content analysis or discourse analysis would find this outlet is very selective with words like “massacre” or active terms liks “kills”. That’s just its bias.
Nice to see it quantified!
I know everyone on the fediverse has been getting annoyed by all the passive voice headlines about how Palestinians magically “died” or “were killed”.
Being told to restrict usage of “Palestine” when talking about Palestine is truly something else. I guess “journalistic integrity” means holding equal the opinions of Nazis and real people, which covers “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. But occupied territory? What else is it then?
there would be 20 congressional hearings about this if it were Ukraine or Taiwan