NY Times Shows How Framing Slants Coverage

By Published On: March 16, 2020

A couple of days ago, we highlighted how David Halbfinger, the New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, cast Israel’s prime minister as a scold for, well, trying to protect vulnerable populations from a pandemic.

If that’s how Halbfinger responds to helpful messages from the Israeli government, we noted, it should come as no surprise that, on the same day, the journalist also suggested Israel denies its Arab population democracy, simply because many Jewish lawmakers are skeptical of partnering with the Joint List. The Joint List is a mostly Arab political alliance that includes a communist party, an Islamist party, and lawmakers who reject the continued existence of the Jewish state and have praised terrorists.

Today, Halbfinger followed up with a piece noting that the Joint List itself refuses to join the Israel government. The contrast between his framing of Jewish lawmakers who don’t want Joint List to be part of the government and Arab lawmakers who don’t want to be part of the government is telling.

In exhibit one, from the New York Times‘s March 12 story, Halbfinger frames Jewish Knesset members who don’t think the Arab List party should be part of the government as racists who see Arabs as “enemies.” The political gulf is proof of bad behavior by Israeli Jews.

halb-jews.jpg

In exhibit two, from today’s story, the shoe is on the other foot. We have Joint List Knesset members who don’t want to join Jewish lawmakers in a government. The distaste goes both ways. But this time, Halbfinger doesn’t wave the point around as proof that the mostly Arab MKs see Jews as “the enemy.” Readers aren’t told that the lawmakers reject the legitimacy of Jewish votes. Instead, the story is again framed in terms of what readers will see as bad behavior by Israeli Jews:

halb-arabs.jpg

We expose the anti-Israel lies so you don't have to. But we can't do it without your help. Join the fight -- Donate now
Tell the World – Share Now!

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 [...]

  • New York Times Adopts Erroneous ‘Palestine’ Terminology

    April 17, 2019

    In two recent articles, The New York Times has incorrectly referred to the present day West Bank or Gaza Strip as "Palestine," contrary to Times style. References to modern "Palestine" in the West Bank and [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • Is a Fake Twitter Account Outed by NY Times Really Real?

    April 1, 2019

    In the New York Times and Israel's Yediot Ahronot, reporter Ronen Bergman relays charges that a network of fake accounts has been activated to support Benjamin Netanyahu's drive for reelection. An Israeli watchdog group has [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • Diminishing the Horrors of Nazism

    February 28, 2019

    There is an unfortunate tendency by some who possess a pulpit -- whether media or otherwise -- to embellish valid (or invalid) points by flippantly tossing out the epithet "Nazis". For example, MSNBC's Velshi & [...]

  • 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, [...]

  • Reuters Falsely Links Jerusalem Embassy, Two-State Solution

    January 9, 2019

    The Jerusalem office park which houses Guatemala's embassy Multiple recent Reuters articles incorrectly report that moving the Brazilian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a dramatic move away from the two-state solution. For instance, [...]