That the New York Times views Israel through a jaundiced eye is not news to those who read the newspaper’s editorial page. But how does this perspective color news coverage? The newspaper’s recent editorial and news article about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Oct. 1 address to the United Nations General Assembly provide a case study.
In his speech, Netanyahu warned against both the threat of a nuclear Iran and the risk of being lulled into false complacency by President Rouhani’s charm offensive. The Israeli prime minister backed up his criticism of Rouhani with detailed evidence pointing to Iran’s continued engagement in nuclear weapons development.
The New York Times editorial on the subject once again revealed the editors' consistently negative stance toward the Jewish state and its leader.
The Israeli leader’s speech was labeled “aggressive,” “combative,” and “sarcastic.” Netanyahu, they wrote, “seems eager for a fight.”
The editorial warned the Israeli leader “and his supporters in Congress” that being “blinded by excessive distrust,” “exaggerat[ing] the threat” posed by Iran, trying to “block President Obama” and “sabotag[ing] the best chance to establish a new relationship” with Iran “could be disastrous.” …The reporters quoted only one outsider, Gary Sick, introduced as “a former National Security Council staff member who specializes in Iran and who is now a research scholar at Columbia University”– to relay the same message. It is no coincidence that they turned to Sick for a quote. His opinions on Iran and Israel are well known—Iranian President Rouhani is “the real thing,” sanctions against Iran should be opposed, Israel’s leader “has been crying wolf nearly as long as he has been in politics.”
What the reporters neglected to mention, however, was that Gary Sick, who had served on former President Jimmy Carter’s staff during the Iran hostage crisis, authored a widely-dismissed conspiracy theory suggesting that former US President Ronald Reagan’s election campaign, with Israel’s help, plotted to delay the US prisoners release in order to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s re-election.