THREE WAYS TO SLANT THE NEWS AGAINST ISRAEL

Dr. Rafael Medoff

There are many ways to slant the news against Israel. An article in the New York Times this week demonstrated three techniques.

The January 2 article, by staff correspondents Liam Stack and Jeffery C. Mays, focused on the Israeli government’s criticism of the decision by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to revoke two executive orders issued by his predecessor to combat antisemitism.

Slanting Technique #1:

Portray the Jewish community as deeply divided. According to the Times article, Mamdani’s positions regarding Israel and antisemitism “alarmed many Jewish New Yorkers,” but “he also won the votes of many other Jewish residents.”

Put that way, it sounds as if New York’s Jews were evenly divided in the mayoral election. But what’s the proof of that?

That paragraph linked to an article in the Times last June—five months before the election—which asserted that “some surveys showed Mr. Mamdani winning as many as one in five Jewish Democrats.”

So what’s the proof that Mamdani won even one in five? That paragraph in turn linked to a May 2025 news report that one survey of a small sample (412 “likely Jewish voters”) predicted Mamdani would win 20% of Jewish votes in the upcoming primary.

So it was a prediction, not an actual outcome. And it was prior to the Democratic primary, not the general election. No scientific analysis of Jewish voting patterns in the general election has yet been undertaken, contrary to what the Times implied.

Slanting Technique #2:

Load up on quotes from one side. The reporters, Stack and Mays, included ample quotations from three sources supporting Mamdani (or opposing the orders he revoked)—an official of the ACLU and two leaders of left-of-center Jewish groups. They quoted from just one statement by Jewish groups opposing Mamdani’s actions, but did not interview any individual Jewish leaders explaining that position.

The quote from the opponents of Mamdani was 32 words long. The quotes from Mamdan’s defenders totaled 135 words.

Slanting Technique #3:

Downplay the real-life impact of Mamdani’s action. The Times noted that one of the orders revoked by Mamdani restricted protests outside of houses of worship, which the previous mayor issued because of what the Times called “rowdy protests” outside Park East Synagogue last year.

“Rowdy” did not begin to describe what took place there, but the Times didn’t explain that. Several hundred fanatics, screaming pro-Hamas slogans, gathered around the synagogue’s entrance and intimidated worshippers who were trying to enter, by forcing them to walk a “gauntlet” to reach the door. One speaker led the crowd in chants of “We Need to Make Them Scared!”

Other vicious slogans chanted by the mob included “Brooklyn [i.e. Jews] Out of Palestine!,” “Death, Death to the IDF!,” “From New York to Gaza, Globalize the Intifada!” and “Say it Loud, Say it Clear, We Don’t Want No Zionists Here!”

But none of that appeared in the Times article.

Do some editors and reporters at the Times consciously set out to employ such techniques? Or are their personal biases so deeply entrenched that they just instinctively turn to these methods any time Israel is the subject of their story?

A short commentary from the Facebook page of Dr. Rafael Medoff, historian and author