Last week’s Mideast discourse was dominated by revelations of falsified accusations of war crimes against Israel, this time regarding the lie that the Jewish state is intentionally starving Gazan children to death. Since then we’ve learned more about the photographic hoax at the center of the controversy—and specifically how this new information demolishes the feeble justifications so many of Israel’s critics put forth.
As is now known, a wide array of media outlets used a picture of a boy suffering from cerebral palsy as an example of a child “born healthy” and being starved by Israel. Many of those defending the use of the photo did so based on the premise that even if the media knew it painted a false picture, publishing the image was still a defensible act because the child is suffering from even more than malnutrition, therefore the malnutrition part makes the photo true enough.
But it doesn’t, of course. And it turns out that New York Times editors tried desperately to avoid using a photo of a child with preexisting conditions precisely because they understood it to be unethical. Semafor relates some of the behind-the-scenes discussions at the Times:
“Last Thursday at 3 pm, the Times was preparing to run images of Youssef Matar, a young child in Gaza with cerebral palsy who was suffering from lack of nourishment, alongside its July 24 story that cited doctors in Gaza finding ‘an increasing number of their patients are suffering and dying — from starvation.’
“But the Times’ topmost editors wanted to err on the side of caution. After viewing the gutting photo, according to communications viewed by Semafor, they worried that it might inadvertently call into question the paper’s reporting, which said that many of the children suffering from hunger did not have preexisting health issues.”
According to Semafor, the Times‘ managing editor Marc Lacey asked why they would use a misleading picture “when there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are?” Executive editor Joe Kahn, per internal communications seen by Semafor, put it simply: “The story isn’t framed around people with special needs and the lead art really should not do that, either.”
Absolutely correct, as anyone who has worked in news reporting would know.
So the idea that it would be fine to use the picture knowing the boy had cerebral palsy has been obliterated: The Times had already changed its prospective front page to avoid that very mistake.
But there’s more to learn from the Times’ internal communications. Notice that the editors tell the staff that the story is specifically supposed to make the point that children in Gaza without preexisting conditions are suffering from malnutrition. If the reports of such widespread hunger are true, they explained, there should be plenty of photos that show exactly that. And therefore the Times must reject its first proposed front-page photo, which did not meet those criteria.
And yet, the photo they replaced it with also did not meet that criteria. It must be very easy to find proof that Israel is deliberately starving otherwise healthy children, they said—our reporting makes that claim! And then they proceeded to fail to find a usable example of such a case. They hadn’t realized, they say, that this child also had cerebral palsy, just like the first child they considered using.
You can see it slowly dawning on them that there’s something else entirely going on here, that the trend is not what they believe it to be. You can even sense the frustration creeping into their communication: You reporters, they explain, are saying one thing and then showing us another—and then after we corrected you on it, you did it again!
The unspoken next thought is: Perhaps it isn’t so easy to prove this claim about Israel.
This conversation echoes what Israel’s defenders have been saying for some time. When Israel’s defenders say it, though, they are accused of pushing hasbara, of spinning for atrocities.
The apologies owed won’t be coming any time soon. That’s because the people accusing Israel supporters of cruelty are themselves the very definition of propagandists: They will defend the printing of terrorist propaganda even knowing its falsity. That is worth keeping in front of mind, because they will soon do it again.
