The president of the United States, Joe Biden, strongly criticized the newspaper The New York Times in a meeting at the White House for its “irresponsible” coverage of the explosion at the Baptista Al Ahl i Hospital in the Gaza Strip.
According to a Semafor report, early last week, Biden told several Wall Street executives in the Roosevelt Room that he thought an NYT headline about the explosion was reckless and could have triggered a military escalation in the Middle East.
Additionally, two people briefed on the conversation told the outlet that Biden became particularly angry because the headline had appeared “in an American newspaper.”
Following the explosion, several Arab leaders canceled a planned meeting with Joe Biden in Jordan.
The NYT headline on October 17, the day of the hospital explosion in Gaza, was blunt and controversial: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.”
However, as the hours passed, Israel denied with evidence that the attack had not been carried out by its forces and that the explosion came from a failed missile from the Gaza Strip itself. Independent analysts and United States Intelligence determined that Israel did not carry out the attack and that the most likely hypothesis is that a stray missile launched by terrorists hit the health center.
After the publication of evidence that refuted the version of the Ministry of Health in Gaza controlled by Hamas, the NYT was forced to issue a clarification.
“The Times’s initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast. However, the early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was,” the Times editors wrote.
