Luckily, we have Israel's Consul in New York, Ofir Akunis. He’s the one who made the New York Times apologize for the giant photo published on its front page on July 25, featuring an emaciated baby in its mother's arms, with a headline about starvation in Gaza.
It turns out that the heartbreaking baby actually suffers from a genetic disease, but the giant photo was published on the front page, while the correction was buried at the very bottom of the article on the website.
Worse yet, the article titled Gazans Are Dying Of Starvation which features this photo on Instagram, has 364K likes and 118K shares, on a NYT page with 19.3 million followers. It’s still there, check it out. The correction was not featured on Instagram, of course, only on a marginal X account with a lot less followers, called NYTimes Communications.
It didn’t help the NYT much – this belated correction became viral on social media, by those who are tired of the unreliable reporting about anything that has to do with Israel. But bad as it may seem, this misleading report is only one example of a practice that has completely gone out of control.
Let's open the spectrum for a moment and look at the entire past week during which the photo was published.
Between July 21-28, 2025, not less than 31 headlines were published in the NYT regarding the alleged Israeli-generated starvation, killing, and “genocide” in Gaza.
During that same week, the word "Hamas" was mentioned in only four headlines: The first declared there was no evidence that Hamas was looting humanitarian aid. The second reported that the US and Israel withdrew from the ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, without any hint that Hamas did something to cause this. The third dealt with Israel's “complete failure” in returning to war after March 2025. The fourth quoted a rights organization that accused Israel of genocide, claiming it wasn't fighting Hamas but Palestinians.
Not a single word that could hint at any Hamas violence or questionable behavior could be found in all four headlines.
Now, try to think about a person who still sees the NYT as a reliable source for Middle East affairs. It would be hard to blame that person for misunderstanding the situation or for the enormous anger they would feel toward Israel. It would also be hard to blame them for indifference toward Hamas.
Through the NYT reporting over time, it seems that Hamas is a marginal factor in the fighting, and this has characterized all of the NYT reporting during the war, except for the first two months.
Why would a respectable news outlet try to cover up for a murderous organization trying to continue ruling Gaza? Why would it not report that Hamas took advantage of the tsunami of reports on starvation in order to harden its stand in the negotiation for a cease-fire? And why would it not dedicate at least one major headline about Hamas's looting of the aid trucks in Gaza along the whole war, despite all the evidence provided by Israel?
A victory of perceptions for Hamas
The NYT isn't the worst of the media outlets covering Israel, and certainly not the only one reporting in this inexplicable manner. What's important to understand is that from Hamas's perspective, this is what a victory of perceptions looks like. It’s exactly what it wants.
The headline summary that appears here frames one random moment in time, but it explains everything. It demonstrates the magnitude of exaggeration. The lack of proportion. The radicalism. When an institution of knowledge exaggerates like this, its readers will also radicalize.
At the margins of society, those who are already on the edge might take extreme actions against Israelis and Jews. It's quite astounding to see so many knowledge institutions, whether media outlets or elite universities, that have been severely influenced by social media trends without realizing it. Does any center of power still have minimal awareness of connecting its actions to consequences?
It's okay to report a humanitarian crisis, but as a part of the whole story, with balanced information about all the relevant actors.
The urge to blame it all on Israel while omitting critical reports about Hamas is unprofessional. You can’t even call it bias anymore – it’s beyond bias. It serves as withholding information about a designated terror organization, and it is dangerously misleading.