On Israel, a media that lies to itself will lie to you too

On Monday, the New York Times published a rare editor’s note addressing an outrageous instance of journalistic malpractice.

The note acknowledged that the paper had “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas,” which runs the Gaza Health Ministry, in its initial reporting on an explosion at a Gaza hospital — a story the Times, but also pretty much the entire Western media, botched completely.

We now have verification — from U.S. and other countries’ intel operations, and multiple media outlets — that the explosion almost certainly came instead from a misfired rocket by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terror group in Gaza. But that initial claim from the Gaza Health Ministry led the Times and other outlets to spin Hamas propaganda as if it was legitimate. In subsequent stories this week, the Times has noted that the ministry is run by Hamas. (No apology for using an image of general Gaza rubble to illustrate the hospital story, however.)