By Emily Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief and Gabriella Gomperts, Features Editor and Social Media Manager
“Omer Neutra has been missing since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.” These are the words written by The Washington Post in a since deleted X post on July 19, 2024. To anyone with the slightest bit of common sense, the sheer lack of attention to the choice of language in this sentence is astonishing.
After reading this post, too many questions arise. All that is stated about Omer Neutra is that he is “missing,” almost as if we are simply unaware of his whereabouts, when in actuality, we know exactly where he is. Apparently, according to The Washington Post, it’s irrelevant to mention that he was brutally taken hostage by Hamas, a radical terrorist organization whose mission is to kill Jews, as stated explicitly in their charter. Is “missing” really the word we use to speak about captives who are being tortured and murdered?
The X post also states that Neutra went “missing” after “the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.” Apparently, according to The Washington Post, it’s irrelevant to mention that this attack was carried out by Hamas terrorists who on that day, murdered over 1,200 innocent civilians and brutally abducted over an additional 250.
We also know from the post that Omer Neutra is the name of the individual who is “missing.” However, that is all the information we get about him. Apparently, according to The Washington Post, a U.S.-based publication, it is irrelevant to mention that he is an American citizen.
As if this sentence is not enough of a poor representation of the media, the one that follows is even more sickening. The post continued, “When his parents speak publicly, they don’t talk about Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, according to local officials. Experts have warned of looming famine.”
It is clear from statements like these made all too commonly by the media today that modern reporting has lost any sense of the integrity that it supposedly once held. Though this post has since been deleted, the updated one is not any better, and still refers to Neutra as “missing.” In this day and age, it is scary how negligent journalists have become in the choice of phraseology used to present their stories and headlines. We would assume that journalists have a code of ethics that they are meant to abide by when sharing news with the world. Yet, the sheer lack of awareness towards the power of journalists’ words by the media today – whether intentional or not – is both inexcusable and detrimental to society.
Over the summer, with each and every notification that popped up on our phone screens, the media’s constant intentional obfuscation of obvious facts weighed down on us more and more. After spending those weeks interning as journalists in Israel, reporting on such stories firsthand and on the ground made the prevalence of this already apparent issue even more burdensome.
The case of this abhorrent Washington Post tweet is only one of many in which the media’s lack of attention toward word choice deliberately sways the world’s outlook on the Israel-Hamas war. On July 31, The New York Times published an article about the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, solely referring to him in the headline as a “key player in cease-fire negotiations.” Yet they failed to mention what one would think are many important facts, like that Haniyeh was the head of Hamas’s political bureau or that he was seen celebrating Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion and murder of thousands of innocent civilians from the luxuries and comforts of his home in Doha, Qatar, located 1,120 miles away from Gaza.
Instead, The New York Times deliberately chose to frame the headline by placing the blame on Israel, stating that “Hamas accused Israel of killing Ismail Haniyeh.” Yet, the article fails to mention that his assassination by Israeli operatives was fully justified – he is, after all, a U.S. state department designated global terrorist who openly called for the destruction of the State of Israel and the entirety of its people.
By portraying Haniyeh as a top negotiator in ceasefire talks, the true facts of this story are ignored and reframed. The narrative is turned from one where a terrorist is rightfully assassinated by a nation fighting a just war of defense, to one that characterizes Israel as the aggressor and Haniyeh, a sheer evil murderer, as the one who lobbied for peace. Israel is also blamed for preventing a hostage deal from occurring rather than Hamas, the ones actually refusing every deal offered after making fanatical demands.
Moreover, a majority of the articles on the Israel-Hamas war commonly quote Hamas terrorists who are referenced as trusted sources of information without second thought. For example, an article in NBC referred to Hamas as “fighters” or “militants.” Just call them what they are: terrorists. Additionally, in their articles, NBC cites “Gazan health officials” and The Washington Post quotes “local officials” from Gaza by default, as though they are trusted sources of information. These publications fail to mention that these “Gazan health officials” are actually Hamas terrorists themselves, whose numbers are intentionally fabricated to over dramatize the situation, and steal the hearts and sympathies of American college students. This lack of transparency goes against basic journalistic ethical standards and continues to sway readers to view Israel as the enemy.
Words are not the only aspect of reporting that journalists must be aware of. When readers flip through a newspaper or scroll through a news site, they consume the information being presented as a whole. This includes the title of the article, the subheading, the byline, and most prominent to the reader’s glancing eyes, the pictures.
On July 29, The Washington Post placed an image depicting members of the Druze community in Israel mourning the death of a child who was killed by a Hezbollah rocket in Majdal Shams on the front page of the paper with the headline “Israel Hits Targets in Lebanon.” The combination of this photo and headline makes it seem as though the image of those mourning in the photo are doing so because IDF strikes killed the child rather than a terrorist organization’s fired rockets. The Washington Post’s deliberate deception of the reader deeply skews their perspectives as they come to understand these stories in a wrongfully informed light.
A recent study conducted by Israeli journalist Lilac Sigan revealed the truth about The New York Times’s biased coverage of Israel. Specifically, The New York Times published a total of 3,848 articles between Oct. 7, 2023 and May 7, 2024, ten times the number of all Israel-related articles published in 2022. Additionally, The New York Times coverage of this war is more critical of Israel and at the same time sympathetic almost exclusively to the plight of Palestinians. The New York Times almost never criticizes Hamas. They published 647 articles sympathetic towards the terrorist organization and only 147 sympathetic towards Israel, and at the same time 72 op-eds that harshly condemned Israel, while only publishing 23 op-eds denouncing Hamas. This begs the obvious question: why is Israel receiving more rebuke from The New York Times than a terror group that instigated the very war the newspaper is covering?
Of course, as journalists, we understand that writing and reporting on breaking news is not an exercise in perfection. The desire to publish stories quickly in order to share them with others often comes before the need to scrutinize every single word of an article for days. However, this desire for celerity must not overshadow the ultimate job of a journalist – representing stories accurately and without bias, especially when reporting on a sensitive subject matter such as this.
When coming across these articles, what shook us the most was not even the blatant disregard for the suffering of a people who have experienced firsthand the pain and agony of one of the most brutal attacks in their history. What’s even more burdensome is the fact that only when the public occasionally condemns these publications do they sometimes release statements about such articles. Yet, in these statements, news outlets don’t even apologize for their dishonest reporting. Rather, they make up pathetic excuses for their actions. The Washington Post merely stated that their story covering the murder of children in Majdal Shams “did not provide adequate context.” However, once such articles are published, the minds of the publications’ readers have already been skewed. An admittance of requiring ‘more context’ will not fix this abhorrent reporting.
At that point, their excuses don’t matter. The damage has already been done.
Photo Caption: The Office of The New York Times
Photo Credit: Unsplash