A recent study by a Yale professor has shown that The New York Times Gaza war coverage projected sympathy toward the Palestinians and lessoned Hamas responsibility rather than give a balanced perspective on the conflict, The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday.
Edieal J. Pinker, professor of operations research at the Yale School of Management conducted his study by reviewing 1,561 Times articles published from the first day of the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, until June 7, 2024. He then referenced both "Israel" and "Gaza" to determine the coverage that may have skewed readers' perception by "diminishing Hamas' responsibility for their situation and the continuation of the war." Pinker noted that he "does not claim the NY Times is biased" in it's reporting and leaves those conclusions to the reader.
"I find that there is a dominant narrative of the war that contextualizes many of the articles," Pinker wrote. "In this narrative, Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023, killing 1200 Israelis, and Israel's military response has killed X thousand Palestinians with X increasing over time. Little mention is made of Israeli casualties post-October 7 or of Palestinian acts of violence post-October 7, even as Israel and Hamas were locked in intensive combat over the eight months of the study period."
Pinker noted that the word "Israel" appeared three times more than the word "Hamas" and that articles featuring Palestinian suffering appeared every two out of three days on average. He summarizes: "I argue that the net result of these imbalances and others is to create a depiction of events that is imbalanced toward creating sympathy for the Palestinian side, places most of the agency in the hands of Israel, is often at odds with actual events, and fails to give readers an understanding of how Israelis are experiencing the war."
Pinker's study of the Times' coverage runs counter to a November report of more than 100 BBC employees who accused the media giant of providing Israel with favorable coverage and urged the company to "recommit to fairness, accuracy and impartiality."