As the world’s most important daily newspaper, The New York Times is disproportionately influential in framing the public and diplomatic discourse on many issues, both in the U.S. and beyond. This is particularly true with regard to the Middle East, given how much space it allocates to the subject. One of the great myths of modern journalism, particularly outside the U.S., is that the New York Times is ”pro-Israel.”
In fact, it would be truer to say that the opposite is the case.
On March 4, a 59-year-old American Baptist, William P. Hyde, was among 21 people killed by a suicide bomber in Davao in the southern Philippines. That an American died was made clear in the following day’s New York Times. The Times titled its news report ”Bombing Kills An American And 20 Others In Philippines.” The first seven paragraphs concerned Hyde, who had lived and worked in the Philippines since 1978, and another American, Barbara Stevens, who had been ”slightly wounded” in the attack. The caption alongside two photos on the front page of that day’s Times also made reference to his death, as did a news summary on page 2. In addition, the paper ran an editorial titled ”Fighting Terror in the Philippines.” And a front-page photo of a wounded boy, and the caption that accompanied it, made clear that at least one child had been among the injured.
The next day (March 5), another American Baptist, 14-year-old Abigail Litle, was among 17 people killed by a suicide bomber on a bus in Haifa, Israel. The story and photo caption in the March 6 Times, tucked at the bottom corner of page 1, made no mention of Abigail’s name. Neither the headline nor the photo caption indicated that an American had died, or that the suicide bomber had deliberately chosen a bus packed with schoolchildren, or that a majority of those killed had been teenagers.
Readers of some newspapers — but not of the Times — were told that Litle’s Missouri-born parents had rushed to Haifa’s Rambam hospital to look for their ”wounded” daughter and instead had found only what remained of her: her legs. They had identified Abigail from an ankle bracelet still attached to one of them. That day’s New York Post carried on its front page a picture of the pretty, New Hampshire-born schoolgirl who had been active in Jewish-Arab school dialogue groups.
The coverage of Litle’s death is just part of what has become a familiar pattern at the Times. The paper downplays Israeli suffering, and de-emphasizes Yasir Arafat’s responsibility for the suffering of Israelis and ordinary Palestinians alike.
Upping the Death Tolls
While the Times couldn’t find room to include a photo of Abigail (or any injured child), it did choose to again run its ”Mideast Death Toll” chart alongside the news report about the Haifa bomb. Strangely, the Times (to my recollection) usually runs this chart — in which it lines up total numbers of Israeli deaths next to the greater number of Palestinian deaths — only on days after Israelis have died. The implication would seem to be that Israel is responsible for more fatalities than the Palestinians.
It also seems odd that the Times doesn’t (to the best of my knowledge) run these kind of football-score-type charts for any other conflict (Protestant vs. Catholic deaths in Northern Ireland, for example, or Afghan vs. American deaths since September 11).
The chart itself is fundamentally misleading. It makes no distinction between civilians and armed combatants, lumping together suicide bombers and other gunmen killed on shooting sprees with their innocent victims. It also reports suspected Palestinian ”collaborators” killed by their own compatriots as if they had been killed by Israelis.
