The NYT: Still Relevant?

In today’s era of social media and instant messaging, legacy media is increasingly challenged, striving to maintain relevance. Against this background, fact-checking and providing unbiased information is all the more important, since one major blunder – which becomes immediately visible to all – is enough to severely harm the reputation that was built over decades. The New York Times’ fouled-up reporting on the Israel-Gaza war is a case in point.  

The First Victim of War is the Truth

On October 17^th, the New York Times (NYT) published an article headlined “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.” A few days later, after it became apparent that Israel did not bomb the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital, the news outlet was forced to rescind its headline and issue a sort of explanation, admitting that their reporting “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas.”

That raised all kinds of questions, specifically, why is it that an esteemed news agency, which claims to provide objective and unbiased information, was so quick to trumpet allegations made by a bloodthirsty terrorist organization akin to ISIS.

Many media outlets, such as, for example, Al-Jazeera (owned by Qatar, which also funds Hamas), have been providing partisan coverage of the Middle East events for many years, using framing mechanisms to highlight Palestinian perspectives over Israeli ones and frame Palestinians as innocent victims of Israeli aggression. These media companies continue to refuse to call Hamas “terrorists” even after their atrocious attack on Israel on October 7^th. While some fringe Western media outlets are siding with the terrorists, their reach and effect are limited.

At the same time, the influential mass media across the political spectrum has mostly strived for objectivity, since, obviously, there isn’t and cannot be any “political context” for mass murder and kidnapping. Against this background, NYT’s taking terrorists’ claims for granted has a sizable negative effect on the outlet’s credibility – which was already shaky, given the news outlet’s long history of biased reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as on several other politically-charged issues within the U.S.  

Less Trust Means Lower Income

The NYT was not the only global news source to rely on Hamas-provided reports; the BBC News has acted similarly, publishing terrorists’ claims without much verification. It must be noted, though, that the British media outlet isn’t perceived as an impartial or reliable source of information about the Israel-Hamas war because of the broadcaster’s peculiar policy of not calling Hamas “terrorists.” Reuters did even worse: in contrast to the NYT and the BBC, it didn’t issue any statement or apology about its fouled-up report.  

In the U.S., CNN, the Associated Press, NBC News, and others, at first, conveyed the same false information about the hospital blast without considering its source’s trustworthiness. Even the Israel-friendly Fox News (FOX) wrote that “hundreds were reported dead” and mentioned “Israeli air strike” in its initial article on the subject.  

Actually, one of the most trusted and respected media outlets globally, the Wall Street Journal, also fell victim to the Hamas disinformation campaign; however, it quickly fixed the slip-up, while its history of credible bipartisan reporting and in-depth investigations continues to shield its reputation. NYC doesn’t have the same credit anymore with the general public in the U.S. or abroad.

Besides, NYT is the only large, globally important media outlet in the U.S. that is an independent, publicly traded company. Herein lies its additional level of vulnerability: if its reliability in the eyes of the public is harmed, its outreach will diminish, leading to dropping advertising income – which will be visible to its investors, who may weigh their future exposure to the stock. In fact, these considerations are quite obviously shared by the market participants, as the New York Times Co.’s shares have lost almost 9% in just 10 days after the faulty report about the hospital explosion.      

Source: Google Finance

Added Value or Nothing

In the instant-news era we all live in since the advent of social media, traditional journalistic outlets are increasingly challenged; some say that legacy media sources will soon be extinct. Under pressure to remain relevant, many media outlets rush with breaking news without the appropriate fact-checking, thus becoming susceptible to manipulations, misinformation, and “fake news.”

However, it is clear that media sources cannot compete with the John Does of X (formerly Twitter) in terms of the swiftness of the messages because that would mean forgoing the verification steps – which, as can be seen in the case of the NYC fiasco, can be very harmful to their reputation. Trust takes ages to build, while it can be lost in the blink of an eye – and that loss would be for nothing since tweets would still outpace any reporting.

The trust in mass media’s accuracy and fairness has been on the decline in the West, and especially pronounced in the more politically polarized U.S. According to a new poll from Gallup, performed in September 2023, Americans’ trust in mass media has tumbled to a near-record low. The grave blunder of many major news organizations in reporting about the hospital blast proves that the public has very solid reasons for that distrust, showcasing the collapse of verification standards that was years in the making.   

The legacy media must find their distinctive added value – or perish. For example, while not immune from copy-pasting false statements arriving from the terrorists, the WSJ has a clear advantage – besides its paramount authority in the field of financial news and analysis – of thorough inquiries and investigative reporting. Thus, its latest reports on the extremely close relationship between Hamas and Iran, which included providing weapons, funding, training, and intelligence, as well as planning the attacks, shed blinding light on the totalitarian regime’s actions. The Journal also unveiled how Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (a smaller Hamas-like terrorist organization), and Iran’s Lebanese terrorist proxy Hezbollah received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding through crypto wallets on Binance and other crypto exchanges, despite the U.S. laws against transacting with terrorist entities.

The New York Times, once the most respected media outlet on Earth, has squandered much of its credibility in the past years. Now, it looks like it is rising to the challenge to mend its past mistakes. For instance, it has published a great investigative report about Hamas stashing food and fuel supplies underground for their terrorist operations, and not letting Gazan civilians get any of these supplies. If the “Gray Lady” succeeds in keeping up the good work, it will regain its posture in the fast-moving, misinformation-ridden digital world. If not, it may indeed be time to short the NYT.   

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