The New York Times Details the Difference Between Journalism and Stenography

The New York Times wrote a headline on Sunday with seemingly contradictory logic: “Trying to Head Off War, U.S. Moves Naval Forces Closer to Israel.” In the short piece, the NYT notes that “Two aircraft carriers — the Theodore Roosevelt and the Abraham Lincoln — and their accompanying warships and attack planes are now in or near the Gulf of Oman.”

Deterrence through displays of force is an effective military tactic, as evidenced by the proliferation of nuclear weapons since World War II and the lack of usage of them, so the issue is not communicating this as an intended outcome, but the credulity inherent in the article in assuming that the Pentagon’s public position matches their private one. If the Biden administration wrote a memo about sending these “attack” weapons out, I’m not sure if it would be much different from what Eric Schmitt and his editors at the NYT wrote.

When I write about mainstream media devolving into stenography for the powerful, this NYT article gets at what I’m talking about.

The United States can talk a big game about trying to be a defensive force in the region, but when they are supplying billions of dollars of offensive weapons to Israel–the clear and obvious aggressor in this mounting regional war who is striking targets in multiple countries–journalists should not just repeat what their Pentagon sources say is their supposed goal in any given operation. You have to create some distance between what they say and what you know.

They even note in the second sentence of the article that the U.S. “has not been shy about announcing the details” of this operation, so why extrapolate those words to a (emphasis mine) “clear effort to deter Iran and its allies from more intense attacks on Israel” in the latter portion of the sentence? How are “attack planes” a “clear” defensive effort? If any newspaper should have learned by now not to report Pentagon assertions as a known fact, it’s the NYT who became famous for laundering George W. Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction” lie about Iraq.

The United States is very likely in violation of international law, as well as its own laws by shipping weapons to another country in violation of international law, even by its own presidential administration’s semi-admission. The gulf between Biden’s rhetoric and his administration’s actions has destroyed its credibility. Reporting its stated intent is different from reporting what is actually happening. Which is, you know, journalism.

One of the endless dismaying aspects of Israel’s genocide of Gaza is how differently it is conveyed between American news sources like the New York Times who have been willing to repackage Benjamin Netanyahu’s lies as their own front-page headline, and Israeli news sources like Haaretz and Palestinian-Israeli ones like +927 Magazine who have reported on a lot of the atrocities committed by the Israeli Defense Forces, including against the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. Much of what I have covered here at Splinter in regard to Israel’s genocide is informed by Israeli reporters quoting Israeli sources.

So if you find yourself wondering how a Jew like me can be so opposed to Israel right now, read Haaretz and +972 Magazine, while readers of the NYT can be led to believe that “attack” forces are a “clear effort” to defend a country.

But Also, the NYT Showed How to Do It Too

One vital thing I have learned in my journey being a media critic since my start at Paste Magazine in 2016 is that issuing blanket reprisals of entire media outlets is not the correct way to go about things for many reasons. There is a cloistered group of journalists in elite circles who practice the kind of stenography that offends mine and so many others’ journalistic sensibilities, but the NYT is not a monolith, as exemplified by the internal strife that continually leaks from it. Here’s a NYT article from two days before the one I’m taking to task hedging in the exact manner I’m talking about, titled “With $20 Billion Weapons Deal, U.S. Aims to Help Israel and Deter Iran.”

The headline is not the greatest as it expresses a similar kind of unfound certainty as the first one as to the U.S.’s true “aim” in shipping offensive weapons (just write “U.S. says it aims” and now you’re communicating the most you can confirm of what’s happening), but speaking as an editor, I’m begging the internet to stop yelling at writers for headlines and start yelling at editors over them. Lara Aims does a good job balancing the difficult notion of reporting on a subject operating in its own self-interest who is helping to carry out a genocide while giving credence to the obvious notion that a display of force is one of the more proven strategies to deter attacks.

The display of force in her article is different from the first one, as these are future weapons shipments while the former are about the weapons themselves right now. Instead of endorsing the United States’ “deterrence” assertion with the NYT‘s credibility, she does things like quoting Bradley Bowman, a former U.S. Army officer and senior military expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research group, saying “We are sending extraordinary combat power to the region to deter a wider regional war.”

In the very next section, Aims provides the reader with a “look at the arms sales the Biden administration notified Congress on Aug. 13 that it has approved,” listing out everything we know without coming to any certain judgements on behalf of the NYT, and always quoting an official when making an assertion she does not have the “clear” evidence for yet.

There are many people at the Times who practice the fundamental tenets of journalism and are a vital source of common knowledge. The “media” is not just one thing, and journalism is not a static enterprise. It is always evolving to meet the moment, and those journalists who do not are the ones who should command your skepticism.