New York Times Downplays Attacks, Death of Ambassador
When totalitarian Islamists killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens (pictured above) and three other Americans in Libya and stormed the embassy in Egypt, The New York Times put the story on page A4. Apparently, the death of a U.S. diplomat, the storming of an embassy and the invasion of a consulate is not worthy of front-page coverage.
This caught the attention of Newsbusters, which joked that the paper is not printing all the news fit to print, but all the news “fit to downplay.” Dan Drezner asks in a tweet (also highlighted at Newsbusters) “How in the hell do the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi not make the front page of the New York Times? #pageA4? #really?”
This question becomes more salient when in light of The Times coverage of the arrest of five Israeli Jews for the beating of an Israeli Arab in Jerusalem on Aug. 16, 2012. When the arrest took place the New York Times put this story on the front page on Aug. 21, 2012. A few days later, it published a page 3 story on how the beating highlights problems in Israeli society.
Why is a beating in Jerusalem more worthy of our attention than the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the death of a U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans? Under international law, embassies are the sovereign territory of the countries that own them. Attacks on embassies are by their very nature, acts of war.
How is this not front-page coverage?
Sept. 21, 2012 Update
Several respondents in the comments posted below report that their editions of the Sept. 12, 2012 New York Times did include front page stories about the attacks on American diplomatic interests in Egypt and Libya.
CAMERA’s did not and the Nexis-Lexis archive states that the article appeared on page A4 of the paper.
It is important to note that the Washington Post’s first story about the attacks appeared on page A10 and the Wall Street Journal’s first story about the attacks appeared on page A8 of that paper.
The NYT’s placement seems most noteworthy because the newspaper has a history of of a striking double-standards and questionable judgment when it comes to what is featured on its front page and what is relegated to its back pages.
More from SNAPSHOTS
Professor John Quigley Falsely Condemns Israel and U.S. Support in His Syndicated Column
April 30, 2019
John B. Quigley In his widely distributed April syndicated opinion piece mainly about ISIS, the Islamist terrorist entity, John B. Quigley, an Ohio State University law professor, argues that claims of an imminent ISIS resurgence [...]
The New York Times’ Slow Reaction to Hamas Crackdown on Palestinian Protesters
April 4, 2019
The New York Times took a slight jab at Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, in a recent story about Hamas's crackdown on Palestinian protesters who spoke out against its policies in [...]
CNN’s Zakaria Deals With U.S. Proclamation Recognizing Golan As Part Of Israel
April 3, 2019
Fareed Zakaria hosted an eight-minute discussion of the Golan matter at the end of his weekly (weekend) program, “Global Public Square “ (GPS) hour-long Cable News Network (CNN) broadcast. The broadcast, on both CNN and [...]
NY Times Reporter David Halbfinger Editorializes Israel as “Brutal”
March 6, 2019
New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger Israel, according to the New York Times, is a brute. A March 3 news analysis piece—not an opinion piece—by the newspaper's Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger uses [...]
Palestinian Malevolent Indoctrination Exposed; Mainstream Media Are Indifferent
February 26, 2019
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israel-based non-governmental organization, analyzes and presents in English to the world the ongoing inflammatory indoctrination of Palestinians in Arabic particularly via Palestinian Authority (PA) television (West Bank). PMW is a [...]
Did WCC Activists Attend A Birthday Party Promoted by Palestinian Extremist Organization?
February 4, 2019
The video is a bit fuzzy and grainy. But the footage of birthday party for Shadi Farar, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who spent three years in an Israeli jail on charges of intent to murder, [...]