Small Steps: Improved NY Times Language on Target of Hamas Rockets

By Published On: November 15, 2018

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Earlier this week, we pointed out how a New York Times article about fighting between Israel and Hamas neglected to inform readers that Palestinian rockets were fired indiscriminately toward civilians in Israeli towns and cities.

This was part of how the newspaper created a false equivalence between Hamas’s rocket attacks against civilians, each one a war crime, and Israel’s counterstrikes against Hamas assets in Gaza. Instead of being clear about where those rockets were aimed, the report said only that they were fired “into Israel” or “across much of southern Israel.” It even suggested Israel’s civilians were unintended targets: “On both sides of the Gaza border,” wrote David Halbfinger, the newspaper’s Jerusalem bureau chief, “civilians caught up in the fighting said they felt terrorized by it.” Israel’s civilians weren’t “caught up” in the fighting. They were targeted in the fighting.

With an article published today, entitled “With Small Steps, Palestinians and Israelis Try to Tackle Gaza’s Ills,” the same author took a… small step in the right direction. This article makes clear, at least, that the fighting involved “hundreds of rockets raining down on Israeli cities.” It might not sahre that Hamas is viewed internationally as a terror organization, or that indiscriminately firing into cities is a violation of international law. But rockets raining on cities is certainly more informative than rockets fired into Israel.

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