New York Times faced intense scrutiny in 2023 over Israel-Hamas coverage

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The New York Times faced intense criticism throughout the final months of 2023 over its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.

The Times began drawing ire as the horror unfolded in southern Israel on Oct. 7, immediately portraying Palestinians as the victims with the headline "Gaza Has Suffered Under 16-Year Blockade."

But perhaps the biggest blunder from the Gray Lady during the Israel-Hamas war was its botched coverage of the explosion at a Gaza hospital.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health alleged that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital through an airstrike killing over 500 civilians. Subsequent reporting and intelligence found it was an explosion in the hospital's parking lot stemming from a misfired rocket fired by Hamas ally Islamic Jihad, resulting in a death toll a fraction of what Hamas alleged. The initial reports from the Times and others prompted several Arab leaders to cancel meetings with President Biden and sparked riots outside of U.S. and Israeli embassies across the Middle East.

While many news organizations uncritically ran with Hamas' narrative, The Times stood out with its blaring headline that read "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say" and even included an unrelated photo of rubble from a bombed building from a separate incident.

The following week, The Times published an editor's note admitting it relied "too heavily" on Hamas' version of events.

The conclusion from Hamas' disinformation campaign drawn by New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg was that "It Is Impossible to Know What to Believe in This Hideous War."

Former Times reporter Alison Leigh Cowan accused her ex-employer of committing "modern-day blood libel" with its erroneous reporting. The Free Press editor Bari Weiss, a former Times opinion page editor, raked the paper over the coals for "publishing Hamas PR" and its subsequent "soft non-apology."

Even after that unflattering episode, the coverage of the war from the "Paper of Record" has continued raising eyebrows. While reporting on the Hamas sympathizers who have ripped posters of Israeli hostages in cities and college campuses across the country, The Times described the anti-Israel vandalism as "its own form of protest- a release valve and also a provocation by those anguished by what they say was the Israeli government’s mistreatment of Palestinians in the years before Oct. 7 and since the bombing of Gaza began."