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The New York Times has hit back at a study which found major imbalances in its Gaza war coverage, saying critics “cherry-pick data” to support their beliefs.
The peer-reviewed research analysed 1,559 news articles published by the US newspaper during the first eight months of the war and concluded that its coverage placed overwhelming responsibility on Israel while diminishing Hamas’s continuing role in the conflict.
Responding to the findings, a New York Times spokesperson told Jewish News: “The advocates behind multiple studies on media bias cherry-pick data that supports their beliefs while ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
“Our work has exposed violations of international law and grave human rights abuses. War crimes prosecutors have cited our investigations as they gather reporting that would not otherwise have come to light. We have consistently called attention to the humanitarian toll, offering readers legal and historical context throughout our body of work that spans more than 23,000 articles, photos, and videos on the conflict since 7 October 2023.
“Our role is to seek the truth, even when it includes inconvenient or uncomfortable facts. We remain open to good-faith disagreement, but we will not let critics or advocacy campaigns move us away from independent reporting.”
The study, by Yale School of Management professor Edieal Pinker and published in the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, examined New York Times articles published between 7 October 2023 and 7 June 2024.
Among its findings, the word “Israel” appeared 27,205 times across the articles analysed, compared with 8,499 mentions of Hamas.
It also found that 1,423 of the 1,559 articles made no mention of either Israeli casualties suffered after 7 October or Hamas combatants killed during the subsequent war.
Pinker argued that the coverage created a broader picture in which Israeli actions were consistently foregrounded while Hamas’s role in sustaining the fighting received considerably less attention.
“Drawing on a corpus of 1,559 news articles, I document a dominant narrative consistent with a framing that assigns near-exclusive agency and responsibility to Israel while diminishing Hamas’s role in sustaining the conflict,” he wrote.
He said the coverage “almost completely” omitted Israeli casualties after 7 October, Hamas combatant casualties and subsequent Palestinian violence.
The research also identified a sharp difference in the attention given to the personal suffering of Israelis and Palestinians.
“Personal accounts of Palestinian suffering appear two out of every three days, while comparable accounts of Israeli suffering rarely appear,” Pinker wrote.
He argued that the cumulative effect was to portray Israel as the “sole aggressor” in the conflict and Palestinians as “passive victims”.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee criticised the newspaper following the publication of the findings, writing on X: “When you didn’t think you could have more contempt for the NYT and the bias of (mainstream media), this will solidify your outrage as to how unreliable once respected and now discredited news organisations have become.”
The study examined coverage from the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, through to 7 June 2024.
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