Getting Emotional, Bungling the Facts

"More Than 225 Die in Gaza as Israel Strikes at Hamas"
A1, Sunday 12/28/08
By Taghreed El-Khodary and Ethan Bronner

The first major NYT article detailing the ongoing Israeli military operations against Hamas comes out relatively 'even-handed,' albeit with some serious deficiencies. At times, the article falls into excessively emotional accounts and makes unsubstantiated assertions. Overall though, this NYT piece falls into the trite 'cycle of violence' (moral equivalence) category, bringing no further illumination to the reader except that 'both sides' are culpable in one way or another.

For the good part, the reporters clearly state that "most of the dead were security officers for Hamas," making clear that the military operation was no massacre of civilians as more than a few have reflexively claimed. The article also devotes a few paragraphs to the statements of Israeli security officials, who further explicate the Israeli predicament.

Most importantly, a brief paragraph succinctly summarizes the position of Hamas:

Hamas is officially committed to Israel's destruction, and after it took over Gaza in 2007, it said it would not recognize Israel, honor previous Palestinian Authority commitments to it or end its violence against Israelis.

In terms of the context leading up the invasion, the article does write that "on Wednesday, some 70 rockets hit Israel over 24 hours, in a distinct increase in intensity." Unfortunately, this statements comes in the second to last paragraph in a quite lengthy article. This context deserves mention much earlier, including the protracted history of such rocket fire since its initiation in 2001, lest it falsely appear that Israel executed this precise military strike for no reason.

For the bad in the article, there is much to be said. The reporters clearly make some unsubstantiated assertions:

But with work here increasingly scarce because of an international embargo on Hamas, young men are tempted by the steady work of the police force without necessarily fully accepting the Hamas ideology.

Where is there any support for this assertion? And what does it mean to not fully accept Hamas ideology? What part did they accept? The killing of Jews part?

Beyond this unproven assertion and others, the piece all too often relies on excessively emotional statements and language.

Here is one of the more emotive paragraphs:

Still, there was a shocking quality to Saturday's attacks, which began in broad daylight as police cadets were graduating, women were shopping at the outdoor market, and children were emerging from school.

The truth is, a similar statement could have been written if the operation had been carried out at night - 'Palestinian children were sleeping quietly in their beds when Israeli jets screamed overhead...' The language in the paragraph conflates what were in fact the Israeli targets - Hamas security personnel - and civilians.

The authors further write that "while enough food has gone in [to Gaza] to avoid starvation, the level of suffering is very high and getting worse each week..." To even mention the term starvation seems quite extreme, as Israel clearly possesses the moral-humanitarian sense to avoid such a terrible catastrophe.

In the end, the NYT continues to rely on a crude moral equivalence calculus, allowing Hamas to provide some of its key propaganda points in the process. With protracted Israeli operations likely, readers should expect further problematic coverage, which will probably only worsen as the conflict continues.

[FYI: The article in the paper and online were signficantly different, including the title]