President Joe Biden was reportedly seething over The New York Times’ coverage of an explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, Semafor reported, “Biden raged against The New York Times in a private White House meeting early last week, after the Times amplified a Hamas claim that an Israeli airstrike was behind the Oct. 17 bombing of a Gaza hospital.”
It noted the Oct. 17 explosion derailed a planned trip to Jordan.
Shortly after news of the explosion broke, the Times ran a headline that stated, “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.”
The headline was later revised to remove mentions of Israel or a “strike.”
It's like the "Homer into the Bushes" meme just with NYT pic.twitter.com/w2lOIwUgTc
— American Prometheus 🟦 (@daniopp) October 17, 2023
While Hamas claimed Israel bombed the hospital, the U.S. and Israel insist the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch in Gaza.
The day after the explosion, Biden traveled to Israel and declared, “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you, but there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we gotta overcome a lot of things
Two people briefed on a conversation the president had with Wall Street executives told Semafor that Biden called the headline irresponsible and fretted it could have led to a military escalation in the Middle East.
Specifically, the outlet reported Biden “fumed in particular that the headline had appeared ‘in an American newspaper.’”
Roughly a week after the blast the Times published an Editors’ Note and stated its “initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials, and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast. 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.”
“The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was,” the note continued.
It wound down by stating, “Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified.”
