New York Times Israel correspondent says Palestinians deaths aren’t worth talking about

In a New York Times podcast episode this week about Israel’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, an Israel correspondent made this stunning admission about how little the paper values Palestinian lives:

“Frankly, I don’t think we would be having this conversation if a group of Palestinian aid workers had been killed.”

For months, The Intercept has documented how Palestinian lives are routinely devalued in major U.S. news outlets. Nevertheless, it was chilling to hear two Times journalists in a heavily produced and edited piece flatly state that Palestinian deaths aren’t newsworthy.

Amid deep-seated anti-Palestinian bias at the New York Times and other major media outlets, The Intercept is among the few U.S.-based newsrooms covering Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza without discounting or dehumanizing Palestinian lives. But as a nonprofit outlet, we rely on reader donations to continue this vital coverage.

At The Intercept, we believe Palestinian lives are worth discussing. Will you chip in $5 to help support The Intercept’s reporting of Israel’s war on Gaza?

In January, The Intercept published a detailed analysis of the initial weeks of war coverage from Gaza in three of America’s most influential newspapers — the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times — and we found a persistent and significant anti-Palestinian bias.

For instance, during the first six weeks of the war, even as Palestinian deaths far outpaced Israeli ones, Israelis were mentioned at a rate of 16 times more per death than Palestinians. Highly emotive terms like “slaughter” and “massacre” were used 60 times more often to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians.

Later, The Intercept uncovered major flaws in the New York Times’s front-page report on the alleged use of sexual violence as a weapon of war during Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7.

While other outlets systematically devalue Palestinian lives, The Intercept consistently shines a spotlight on the horrific human consequences of Israel’s war on Gaza — which has so far killed more than 33,000 people and threatens many more with mass starvation.

Throughout the war, The Intercept has published stories reported from Gaza spotlighting the suffering and death of Palestinian civilians — including how for months the IDF has repeatedly targeted hospitals and civilian centers, making the provision of humanitarian relief all but impossible.

The Intercept’s reporting has never been more needed than it is right now as we witness the unfolding destruction of Gaza and mass slaughter of the Palestinian people.

Will you make a donation to help support coverage of the war in Gaza that refuses to discount the lives of Palestinians?

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