{"id":271704,"date":"2024-08-19T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=271704"},"modified":"2024-08-18T07:18:16","modified_gmt":"2024-08-18T06:18:16","slug":"words-like-slaughter-a-comparative-study-of-the-new-york-times-reporting-in-ukraine-and-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/08\/words-like-slaughter-a-comparative-study-of-the-new-york-times-reporting-in-ukraine-and-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Words like Slaughter:\u2019 A Comparative Study of The New York Times Reporting in Ukraine and Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An in-depth comparison of <\/em>The New York Times coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine vs. Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza shows how the <\/em>Times dutifully launders the news to fit the U.S. government\u2019s agenda.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

16 Aug 2024 <\/em>– \u201cWords like \u2018slaughter,\u2019 \u2018massacre\u2019 and \u2018carnage\u2019 often convey more emotion than information,\u201d wrote New York Times<\/em> standards desk editor Susan Wessling in a November 2023 memo to the staff of the \u201cpaper of record.\u201d It was over a month into the current U.S.-Israeli war on Gaza. Over 10,000 Palestinians had been martyred by the occupation forces. Congress had voted to send tens of billions more in lethal military aid to the Zionist entity. Wessling added, \u201cThink hard before using [words like \u2018slaughter\u2019] in our own voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why were Times <\/em>employees told to \u201cthink hard\u201d about conveying \u201cmore emotion than information?\u201d Wessler did not specify. But nothing in this memo was new; it was a series of implicit reminders. Think hard about which narrative you\u2019re constructing. Who your bosses are. Who your president is. Who your bosses and your president say the enemy is.<\/p>\n

As anyone who had spent time during the last 18 months in the newsroom well knew, The New York Times<\/em> has no qualms about emotionally condemning war crimes committed by enemies of the U.S. empire.<\/p>\n

\u201cCARNAGE WIDENS AS CEASEFIRE TALKS FALTER<\/em>\u201d was the front-page headline on March 11, 2022, accompanied by six aerial photos showing Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. On April 5 after Russian forces withdrew from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, leaving behind dozens of corpses, the front page read, \u201cHORROR GROWS OVER SLAUGHTER IN UKRAINE<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ukraine and Gaza are not perfect historical parallels. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine still provides a useful point of comparison to Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza. Both have occupied the media\u2019s attention for months on end, and both represent struggles deeply embroiled in U.S. empire. (The argument that there is a breach in parallels because Gaza \u201cstarted it\u201d on October 7 only holds up if one ignores the forced expulsion, apartheid, and occupation imposed on Palestinians by Zionists for the last century<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Russia is a demonstrable threat to U.S. foreign policy interests, and as such, The Times<\/em> presents its actions in the harshest terms possible while uplifting Ukrainians resisting Russian invasion as front-line defenders of the Western way of life. (And of course, The US and NATO bear responsibility for proposing a pathway to NATO membership for Ukraine, a move they knew would provoke Russia \u2014 while simultaneously delaying that membership to shirk direct responsibility for Ukraine\u2019s defense if and when Russia invaded. Ukrainians were placed in the middle of this bloody geopolitical dispute.)<\/p>\n

In contrast, Israel is the United States\u2019 closest ally in the Middle East and has acted as a proxy for its regional interests for decades. The United States has a vested interest in sustaining and defending the Zionist project \u2014 a project which necessitates the physical and cultural erasure of Palestinians. And mainstream Western media outlets like The Times <\/em>dutifully use their pages to launder this interest.<\/p>\n

Through a survey of every article The Times<\/em> wrote during the first six months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and quite a few beyond that point), Writers Against the War on Gaza \/ The New York War Crimes<\/em><\/a> conducted a comparative, qualitative study of The New York Times<\/em> coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with its coverage of Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve separated this study into four sections: War Crimes<\/em>; Resistance<\/em>; Ukraine Needs Weapons!<\/em>; and Culture. <\/em>Each section demonstrates a contrast between coverage of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> reporting consistently condemns war crimes committed by Russia while in Gaza, it either obfuscates their nature or legitimizes Israel\u2019s excuses for committing them. In Gaza the accusation that resistance fighters operate amongst civilians grants carte blanche for Israeli war crimes; in Ukraine the tactic is framed as that of a wily and brave resistance struggling against a military with vastly superior firepower. Ukraine\u2019s \u201coutgunned\u201d army always needs more weapons, while the notion of The Times <\/em>suggesting so for Hamas is absurd. And while the paper has provided in-depth coverage of the art and culture that is at risk of being lost in Ukraine, it has categorically ignored Israel\u2019s violent campaign to erase Palestinian cultural production.<\/p>\n

War crimes<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By the time Wessling\u2019s memo was distributed to her staff, The Times<\/em> had already splashed words like \u201cslaughter<\/a>,\u201d \u201chorror<\/a>,\u201d \u201cmassacre<\/a>\u201d and \u201ctrail of terror<\/a>\u201d across their pages when covering the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7. An Intercept<\/em> analysis<\/a> found that between Oct. 7 and Nov. 24,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a \u2018massacre\u2019 on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of \u2018slaughter\u2019 was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While The Times<\/em> has equivocated, justified, ignored and soberly depicted Israeli war crimes, our analysis reveals a preference towards condemning Russian crimes with deeply affective language.<\/p>\n

This front page story [left] both unequivocally categorizes Russians as \u201cinvaders<\/em>\u201d and vividly condemns \u201chorror<\/em>,\u201d \u201cdeath and terror<\/em>,\u201d \u201catrocities<\/em>,\u201d \u201cmass killings, torture and rapes<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no qualification or both-sidesing of the story, and no deflection of blame, as we have come to expect from The Times<\/em> coverage of Gaza, in which the IDF is both the invading army and the main journalistic source. The stories about Ukraine \u2014 an occupying army destroying and looting houses, while shooting, torturing and committing sexual abuse \u2014 depict precisely what the IDF has done in Palestine for decades, and at an accelerated pace over the last 10 months. But stories this direct and condemnatory about Israel\u2019s war crimes do not appear in the pages of The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Devastating images splayed across its front pages, accompanied by deeply emotional appeals to the humanity of Ukrainians and the inhumanity of Russian forces, are ubiquitous throughout The Times<\/em>\u2019 coverage of the war in Ukraine. In other news articles<\/a>, the paper writes authoritatively of \u201cthe indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes Moscow\u2019s prosecution of the war.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

You can find more examples of The Times<\/em> reporting on Russian atrocities here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> went so far as to set up an interactive page (Documenting Atrocities in the War in Ukraine<\/a>) devoted to documenting Russian war crimes (there is one story on a Ukrainian unit executing Russian prisoners). No such page exists for Israel\u2019s war crimes, which include well-documented attacks on schools, hospitals, aid workers, journalists, markets, water facilities, apartment blocks, mosques and refugee camps.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> does not hesitate to describe Russia\u2019s \u201cbombing of civilian targets\u201d in clear and direct terms, nor do they attempt to justify or \u201cboth sides\u201d Russia\u2019s tactics, as is their first impulse with the IDF.<\/p>\n

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – mondoweiss.net<\/a><\/p>\n

___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) is a coalition of media, cultural, and academic workers who are committed to the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people. We organize against Zionism and US militarism from within the imperial core.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Aug 2024 – An in-depth comparison of The New York Times coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine vs. Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza shows how the Times dutifully launders the news to fit the U.S. government\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":238992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[922,87,865,88,234,1232,2571,427,2200,70],"class_list":["post-271704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-bias","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-media","tag-new-york-times","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-palestine","tag-us-empire","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271704"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271707,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271704\/revisions\/271707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}