The New York Times acknowledged on Monday that it “relied too heavily” on claims made by Hamas when reporting on an explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip last week.
In an editor’s note, the publication said it should not have depended so much on government officials affiliated with Hamas to initially report that Israeli forces conducted an airstrike on October 17 that hit the Gaza City hospital and killed hundreds of people. The early account received a “large headline” at the top of the newspaper’s website, the note added.
Such coverage helped fuel anti-Israel protests and gave Rep. Rashida Tliab (D-MI), the lone Palestinian-American member of Congress, a new attack line against Israel.
“The Times’s initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials, and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast,” the New York Times said. “However, the early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”
