Leaked NYT Style Guide Reveals Biased Reporting on Palestine-Israel Conflict

A leaked memo reveals the depth of the controversial newspaper’s anti-Palestinian bias.

A shocking internal style guide from The New York Times was leaked this week, revealing the depth of the controversial newspaper’s bias regarding the Palestine-Israel conflict.

“I’ve closely monitored the paper’s slanted coverage for more than a decade, and I admit to being stunned by this,” wrote Mondoweiss editor James North. “Arguably the worst example of bias is the Times’s directive that its reports should ‘avoid’ using the phrase ‘occupied territory’ when describing Palestinian land.”

“Israel’s military and police checkpoints and the fact that Israel’s military law is supreme – what is this if not an ‘occupation?’” wrote North of the situation in the occupied West Bank, clarifying that Israel’s years-long blockade of the Gaza Strip has been deemed by international legal experts to constitute an occupation as well.

“Occupied territories is the internationally accepted reference to the space,” noted host Wilmer Leon on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Thursday. “I think it's important for people to also understand that the ability to define is the ability to control.”

“I think that's very true,” agreed Palestinian activist and author Robert Fantina. “The New York Times has for years been trying to define the occupation as something else. Sometimes they call it 'disputed territory' or other kinds of language… The United Nations has said it's still considered occupied. So there's no question about it, the legal term is ‘occupation.’”

UN officials have long criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, which has led Tel Aviv to frequently criticize the organization, even though the country owes its creation to a 1948 act of the international body. Recently the Israeli government alleged that several members of UNRWA, the UN organization responsible for aid to Palestinian refugees, were involved in Hamas’ October 7 uprising last year.

US intelligence found no evidence for the claim, and it later emerged the Israeli military had tortured UNRWA employees to extract false confessions, waterboarding the aid workers and threatening them with rape and murder. Israeli torture of detainees is reportedly a routine practice as the country holds thousands of Palestinians without charge.

“Even the United States government accepts [Palestine is] occupied, and that's saying something,” noted Fantina. “So the fact that The New York Times is trying to avoid using 'occupation' and deceive its readers is an attempt to control the narrative. It's about control… and that's what they want to do, control the narrative in Israel's favor.”

“There are international laws governing occupation,” he added. “For the occupied, they have the right – the legal right – to resist the occupation in any way at their disposal, including armed struggle. That is specified.”

“Fortunately, people aren't buying it anymore because of the prevalence of social media and people seeing what's actually happening. And the prevalence of independent news sources. They're seeing that, yes, Palestinian people are being massacred in huge numbers – men, women, and children.”

Discussion then turned towards the leak of several US State Department cables that revealed the Biden White House, despite publicly declaring its support for a so-called two-state solution, has undermined efforts towards that end at the United Nations. The leaks revealed Washington was privately lobbying foreign countries to vote against full recognition of Palestine at the international body in order to avoid the embarrassment of a lone veto against the measure.

“[Biden] believes, as a Zionist, in this myth of God-given land to the Jewish people or whatever,” noted Fantina. “Yet then he says he supports a two-state solution, which would deprive the Israelis of a good portion of land. So he can't be seen as an honest broker between the two.”

“He can't be seen as anyone with the rights of the Palestinians in his mind. He only cares about the Israelis, and the Palestinians can all be killed as he's supporting now, as he's financing. And it doesn't matter to him as long as Israel gets whatever it wants.”

Despite its constant violation of international law, Israel frequently manages to intimidate its critics into silence through extensive lobbying and influence in Western politics. Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein documented the settler colonial country’s efforts in a book entitled “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.”

“After the Holocaust, Jews can do whatever they want,” claimed former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, summing up the mindset of Israel’s defenders.

In fact, many Jewish people reject any association with the Zionist cause, decrying the country’s abuses. The Zionist lobby has persecuted Jewish and non-Jewish critics of Israel alike; in 2007 Finkelstein was denied tenure and forced out of his position at DePaul University after a campaign against him by pro-Israel lawyer Alan Dershowitz.