"Hamas Today"...

...otherwise known as the Washington Post.

It’s hard to tell whether the Washington Post or the New York Times has become the more earnest cheerleader for the Democratic Party. For the Democrats’ relatively newfound and swooning embrace of anti-Semitism, however, the award has to go to the Post.

The details leave little room for doubt, and tell what would be a shocking story if the Post were any longer interested in journalism. Here’s the depressing story (emphasis added):

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is releasing an analysis this morning accusing the Washington Post, which has been widely criticized for its coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, of “abuse of anonymous sourcing” in its coverage of the conflict. The report comes the same day that the paper included an editor’s note in its print edition over a headline of a story about Hezbollah’s attack on Israel. 

The report, authored by Washington Institute Executive Director Robert Satloff, is based on the institute’s database for reporting on the war, which collected 436 articles in total from seven major media outlets, 379 of which “drew from an anonymous or confidential source who was a government or organizational official or someone described as being knowledgeable about sensitive political, military, or diplomatic issues.”

The Post, according to the report, “was responsible for 72% of all the citations of Gaza-related unofficial anonymous sources — more than five times as many as both The New York Times and all the other major U.S. media platforms combined.” 

Those of us masochistic enough to read both the Times and the Post can’t be surprised at the slant, but have to be surprised at its extent.

“Quite apart from accusations of advocacy, bias, or partisanship, these findings point to serious professional journalistic failings that distinguish the Post from the other six U.S.-based media organizations included in the database,” Satloff writes. 

“Indeed, abuse of anonymous sourcing at the Post appears to be a systemic problem, with responsibility that runs from correspondents in the field to the most senior editors in Washington. This may not be the reason the Post is currently going through convulsive change, but one can only hope that it comes out at the other end with this problem fixed.”

I don’t pretend to know what’s going on with the Post, but you know something is up when the paper breathlessly and credulously reports about unnamed “Gaza health officials” even more often than it reports about Donald Trump’s hair.

In his analysis, Satloff contrasts the Post’s use of anonymous sources with that of The New York Times, saying that the latter “appears to have done a commendable job of following its in-house rules on use of anonymous sources in its Gaza war reportage.”

“Unlike the Post, which frequently drew upon anonymous sources for colorful quotations or scene-setting observations, other news media generally restricted such use to providing factual information not available elsewhere. As for the New York Times specifically, it cited unnamed local people more than any media platform besides the Post, but all eight stories did so to relate factual information,” he says. “In none of the Times’s articles is the unnamed source given a platform to offer an opinion or just provide additional color.”

“Additional color” is the Report’s euphemism for painting Israel’s fight for its survival, not to mention anything that could be mistaken for normal standards of civilized life, as a months-long war crime by “Zionists.”

[Satloff] points to one story published on Nov. 17, 2023, later updated on Dec. 28, “alleging a purposeful Israeli policy of separating Gazan mothers from their premature babies allowed to be born in Israeli or West Bank hospitals.”

Satloff notes his Times of Israel piece criticizing the article, which alleges “numerous violations of journalistic practice, which led to the Post re-reporting the story and issuing an apology and a correction.”

That article, entitled “Israel’s war with Hamas separates Palestinian babies from their mothers,” now has a lengthy editor’s note, part of which acknowledges that the story “mischaracterized some aspects of Israeli rules for permits that allowed some Palestinian women, before Oct. 7, to travel from Gaza to give birth at hospitals in the West Bank and Israel.”

“The article incorrectly said that all Palestinian mothers who received authorization to leave Gaza for humanitarian reasons had to return to Gaza to reapply after their permits expired. In fact, it was not always necessary for mothers to return to Gaza. The article has been updated to specify that it was hospital officials who told two Palestinian mothers that they needed to return to Gaza to apply for new permits,” the note reads. 

So the libel gets published, becomes part of the narrative, then weeks later gets a tepid correction. This is an old stunt by the anti-Semitic Left, and the Left generally, but it’s still a disgrace, and still leaves any honest person wondering what’s not getting corrected.

The most recent editor’s note in Tuesday’s print edition — the third time in seven months that the paper has acknowledged shortcomings over its coverage of Israel — relates to a story on the outlet’s website with the headline “Israel strikes deep in Lebanon after rocket attack, stoking fear of wider war.”

Hamas’ (really Iran’s) years of terrorist murder seem never to spark “fear of wider war,” but responding to them does so all but instantaneously. It’s then, and virtually only then, that the MSM and the Administration are brimming with calls for “restraint.”

In the print version of the story on Monday, the headline read: “Israel hits targets in Lebanon,” without mention of the Hezbollah rocket attack that killed 12 children on a soccer field in a Druze town in Israel’s Golan Heights over the weekend. 

The soccer field is now a crater. I’ve seen the photograph and will try to publish it.

“The headline and subheadline that accompanied a July 29 Page One photo and article about Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon did not provide adequate context,” the note reads. “The headlines should have noted that the Israeli strikes were a response to a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The photo depicted mourning for one of those victims, as the caption noted.”

Lie now, apologize later. As I say, this is not a new trick.

“The Post keeps failing to meet its commitment to fairness in stories about American Jews. I know it’s costing us our readers’ trust, because they’ve told me so. Top management needs to fix this ASAP,” a Post journalist, speaking on condition of anonymity, told JI in response to learning of the piece. 

The paper published a story in May suggesting that it was sinister for a group of Jewish business leaders to use their influence to advocate for the NYPD to clear out anti-Israel protesters from Columbia University’s campus.

We need to understand that this is where we are and what we’re going to get from the Post (and effectively from the Democrats). It’s bigotry and dishonesty, and not all that disguised, either. It’s also a gold-plated invitation for Trump to take a loud stance in behalf of (1) America’s interests in the Middle East and (2) ordinary decency, instead of, for example, Kamala Harris’s racial background and other unworthy irrelevancies.