It was startling to see last week's screaming headline on the New York Times website, "Israeli strike kills hundreds in hospital, Palestinians say."
We cats didn't major in journalism, but boy, that headline struck us wrong. Apparently a lot of other folks agreed with us, because in a few hours it was gone. Still, as they say, the interwebs live forever, and the Times is dealing with the fallout.
You have to wonder: Why would the Times assign responsibility for the Gaza explosion to anybody, even with the caveat "Palestinians say"? (And anyway, shouldn't it have been "Hamas says"? Hamas does not represent all Palestinians, and Hamas governs Gaza and its health ministry.) The Times also immediately went with the story that 500 were killed, which has since been credibly disputed — and Hamas is not helping clarify it, as you can imagine.
It got embarrassing enough that yesterday, the Times published an "Editors' Note" about their rush to judgment. "The early versions of the [hospital] coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas," they said.
Humph. The phrase "early versions," apparently, is a cowardly stand-in for "we." The "Note" also contained no expression of regret for their egregious failure to enforce normal journalistic standards, or for the fact that their reports contributed to the cancellation of President Biden's Arab summit in Jordan.
Memo to the Times: The lameness of your "Note" may have given this story even more legs, so you really should have owned your mistakes. But we aren't hopeful you'll reform: You're still pretending that it's unclear who hit the hospital (or, we should say, the hospital parking lot), and you've never explained why you have such shitty headline writers. We cats continue to be disappointed, and we HISS.
No comments:
Post a Comment