Biden Reportedly Blasted New York Times Over Coverage Of Gaza Hospital Explosion
Joe Biden privately raged over the New York Times' coverage of the explosion near a Gaza Strip hospital.
Specifically, Biden took issue with a Times headline from Oct. 17 that read "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say."
A report from Semafor says Biden met with Wall Street executives in the White House’s Roosevelt Room last week and questioned how "an American newspaper" could print such a headline.
Biden considered the headline irresponsible and said it could have "triggered a military escalation in the Middle East."
"Within the same day of the headline’s publication and others like it blaming Israel for the blast, prominent Arab leaders canceled their meeting with Biden,' adds the report.
The Times story in question cited the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry's claim that Israeli airstrikes caused an explosion at a Gaza hospital that killed 500 people.
The AP, Washington Post, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal ran similar stories.
Then came the facts.
The U.S. intelligence a day later confirmed that Israel was not behind the explosion. Israel then presented evidence that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad was behind the attack.
As a result, The Times stealth-edited its headline -- a few times:
https://twitter.com/IsraelWarRoom/status/1714412194128171237?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1714412194128171237%7Ctwgr%5E9ef02ae9be9a9baabd2386f9dedd2e30e22cbada%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.outkick.com%2Flegacy-media-becomes-hamas-most-useful-ally-during-hospital-bombing-bobby-burack%2F
Eventually, after days of backlash, the Times released a lengthy editor's note to address its decision to rely on claims from Hamas:
"The Times’s initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials, and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast. However, the early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was."
As we wrote at the time, the legacy media in the U.S. became Hamas' most useful ally during the explosion.
Supposedly reputable outlets cited one source, a source that committed the largest one-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
That does not describe a mistake. That describes malpractice.
Even Joe Biden agrees.