Senior editors at the New York Times brushed aside concerns from staffers over the newspaper accepting Hamas’ version of the deadly hospital blast in Gaza that blamed Israel for the attack, according to a report.
In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 17 hospital blast, the Times’ website featured a main headline that read: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.”
The Times also ran a sub-headline that read: “At Least 500 Dead in Gaza Attack, as Biden Prepares to Visit to Israel.”
Internal Slack messages obtained by Vanity Fair show that junior editors and reporters at the Gray Lady urged the unnamed senior editors to “hedge” the newspaper’s account.
The framing ignited an internal newsroom debate in the virtual Slack channel titled “#israel-briefings,” according to Vanity Fair.
However, those calls were eventually overruled, Vanity Fair reported.
On Monday, the Times admitted it “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”
The internal battle over the initial framing of the story began when a senior news editor took to the company’s internal Slack channel and tagged two other editors on the breaking news team, writing: “I think we can be a bit more direct in the lead: At least 500 people were killed on Tuesday by an Israeli airstrike at a hospital in Gaza City, the Palestinian authorities said.”
One of the editors who were tagged reportedly wrote back: “You don’t want to hedge it?”
A junior reporter who contributed stories to the Times from Jerusalem joined the Slack conversation, writing: “Better to hedge.”
“We’re attributing,” the senior news editor reportedly replied.
Several minutes later, a senior editor on the international news desk wrote: “The [headline] on the [home page] goes way too far.”
Another senior editor asked: “How is it different than the blog hed” — a reference to the live blog posted by the Times.
“They both say Israeli strike kills, per Palestinians,” the second senior editor wrote.
“I think we can’t just hang the attribution of something so big on one source without having tried to verify it,” the international editor said.
“And then slap it across the top of the [home page]. Putting the attribution at the end doesn’t give us cover, if we’ve been burned and we’re wrong.”
Israel had denied having anything to do with the incident immediately after the explosion.
The “Israeli strike” reference in the top headline was removed nearly two hours later on the afternoon of Oct. 17, according to NiemanLab, the digital journalism news site.
Subsequent investigations and analyses of the blast site and the crater left by the source of the explosion seemed to bolster Israel’s claim that it was an errant Palestinian rocket that set in motion the tragic chain of events.
The United States, Canada and France publicly absolved Israel of blame for the deaths at Al Ahli Arab Hospital.
The Times came under fierce criticism for amplifying Palestinian claims of Israel’s responsibility as well as the inflated death toll.
Hamas, the Gaza-based terrorist group that launched a surprise cross-border assault on Israel on Oct. 7 which left at least 1,400 civilians and soldiers dead and thousands of others wounded, initially claimed at least 500 were killed, but Western intelligence agencies believe the actual death toll figure to be much lower.
Hamas has not produced any evidence supporting its claim that it was an Israeli missile that was fired at the hospital.
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 blast.”
The newspaper said it regretted that it “left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.”
The Post has sought comment from the Times.
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