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How Hamas Criticism Vanished in the New York Times

(Jerusalem Post) Lilac Sigan - During the first seven months of the Gaza war, from Oct. 7 to May 7, the New York Times published 3,848 articles on the subject. Since the number of headlines was huge, we decided to analyze only the 1,398 articles that the Times itself defined as most important - those in its newsletter called "Today's Headlines." Each headline was examined according to whether it expressed empathy or criticism towards an entity or group. Out of 1,398 articles, 647 expressed empathy only towards Palestinians (46.2%), and 147 expressed empathy only towards Israelis (10.5%), 50 of which expressed empathy towards the hostages. Thus, Palestinians received 4.4 times more empathy than Israelis. Even in the first month of the war, which was the peak month of empathy toward Israelis after the worst deliberate violence against civilian Jews since the Holocaust, empathy towards Palestinians was almost double the level of empathy towards Israel in the Times. There were 50 articles expressing empathy for Israelis and hostages in October, while the number of articles expressing empathy for Palestinians was 90. From then on, the gap only widened. Empathy towards Israelis dropped by more than 50% in November and kept shrinking from January forward until it almost disappeared. Empathy for Israelis was expressed in 16 articles in January, 10 in February, 9 in March, and 7 in April. Articles expressing empathy towards Palestinians included 63 in January, 72 in February, 76 in March, and 100 in April. 72 op-eds criticized Israel during the war, while 23 criticized Hamas.
2024-05-28 00:00:00
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