Time Checks Netanyahu After the Fact

In July, The Lancet published an article stating that the number of Palestinians Israel has killed since October 7 can be conservatively estimated at 186,000. Official numbers are more difficult to obtain due to the destruction of hospitals and infrastructure Israel has inflicted, but Gaza authorities recently announced that 40,000 Palestinians have been killed.

On the ground level, an insurrection occurred in Israel to stop suspects being arrested for allegedly raping a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Taiman (which was caught on video). Recently, a poll showed that 65 per cent of Israelis surveyed believed the arrested suspects shouldn't face criminal charges. Polio has resurfaced in Gaza as a result of the Israeli siege as they continue to bomb schools. In some instances, the remains of massacred Palestinians are being collected in 70kg bags. This is the only way they can hope to pass along any remains to family members, as the bodies were destroyed beyond all recognition.

The US has recently cleared $20 billion in arms sales to Israel in the midst of all this horror.

Cue Time Magazine, which published an exclusive feature on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man responsible for all that was listed here. The piece begins with Netanyahu apologizing. "I am sorry, deeply, that something like this happened," he confessed. So what was he apologizing for? The torture and rape occurring at Sde Taiman? The murderous campaign against Gaza civilians? The genocide his government is perpetrating?

No. After nearly a year of slaughter, genocidal horror, torture and siege, Netanyahu has finally apologized for his failure in preventing the attacks on Oct. 7. Is that the most pressing question that Time could open the piece with? Apparently, so. In another question, Netanyahu responds to a prompt if he's responsible for the conditions Palestinian prisoners are held under in the interview's transcript. "We're a country of laws," he said, before focusing on internal investigations as a sole solution. Netanyahu's responsibility in the torture is not revisited.

The article itself is filled with biased holes typical of mainstream news reporting. It uncritically repeats the line that Oct. 7 was the "worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust," omitting the Argentine "Dirty War," which resulted in an estimated 3,000 murdered Jews. They also leave out the Israeli military's role in killing civilians on Oct. 7 and shift the burden of the carnage completely onto Israel's targets.

"While Israel faces a cynical enemy that endangers its own people to delegitimize the Jewish state," Eric Cortellessa writes, as he leaves out Israel's genocidal response entirely. "...The price of that full-throttle approach was already evident..."

It would be useful to debunk Netanyahu's comments, and the entire framing within the Time piece. But you'll be pleased to learn that Time fact-checked the Israeli Prime Minister... five days after publication of the feature story and the interview's full transcript.

It's no wonder that journalism is completely crumbling as an industry. If these are the standards of publishing news, Time may as well be sold as toilet paper.

The Time story reeks of apologia for those perpetrating the widespread destruction of Palestinians. Narratively, it focuses on an embattled Prime Minister, Israeli society's view on him, his government and Israel's perspective on the war. No mention of the 70kg bags of shredded human meat handed to next of kin under his military campaign. No mention of the children endlessly bombed by Israel's jets with US funding. All that matters in the piece is that the reader be left with feelings towards Netanyahu that he may be more than meets the eye. He's not, and any work to move people to accept that view is journalistic malpractice.

This, alone, would be enough to throw the Time piece in the garbage. But to separate the fact-checking into a different article, delayed by a business week, is a cynical and see-through attempt to appear sombre and balanced.

"Netanyahu made a number of claims that lacked context, were not supported by facts, or were not true," reads the second sentence of the piece. This should not be in the lead-in paragraph of a story that did not feature the Prime Minister. It should be front-and-centre in their main story. The facts contradicting Netanyahu's claims were widely available when the piece was published. Two of these corrections even point out Netanyahu lied through his teeth. First, when Netanyahu denies saying he supported Hamas, and then when he claimed he has not looked to annex the West Bank.

Netanyahu was dishonest throughout his entire interview, and that should be fact-checked. But that should have been done before publication. Any random person on the street could tell you that, let alone any journalist.

Surprisingly, Time's fact-checking of Netanyahu does not even cover the entire range of his propagandistic claims. In the feature piece, Cortellessa raises the concern around Israel's collective punishment of Gaza. Netanyahu responds that Israel has "gone out of our way" to allow humanitarian assistance, referencing "Israel's delivery of aid through food trucks and air drops." This is the last mention of this concern.

In reality, aid airdops have killed Palestinians, and 300 aid trucks entering Gaza in April, for example, were far from the 500-600 daily trucks needed to sustain life in the sieged areas. If you were expecting confrontation on this note, you'll be disappointed. In the full transcript, Cortellessa's response is merely "Well, on that note, Hamas loots the aid. Everyone knows that..." and moves on to another question.

Times when journalists should be ashamed of their industry are becoming increasingly common. Between layoffs, mergers, stripping outlets for assets and generally poor reporting, there's barely a day that shame doesn't lurk in the field. The Palestinian genocide, especially, displays how deeply journalism has betrayed its purported vision of revealing truth. As of August 19, at least 123 journalists have been killed in Gaza, and yet our industry has not rallied around this blatant attack on press freedom. Further, many outlets have been exposed for their biases against Palestine in their coverage.

But Time's behaviour here is instructive. Their coverage will not be balanced, but it will make moves towards appearing as such. It won't fact-check the man behind a genocide in their feature itself, but they'll follow up afterwards with a piece that doesn't even cover all of his dishonest claims. Indeed, the interviewer himself will echo his interviewee's talking points and yet still attempt to appear rigorous and confrontational.

It's as though you can feel the contempt for the reader emanating from Time. It doesn't take journalistic analysis to know the fact-checking should have been done alongside an interview, let alone before publication. The feature doesn't illuminate the real character of Netanyahu or display the reality of the genocide on the ground. Access journalism like this only serves the journalist's reputation with the establishment and to launder the image of its subject.

Every journalist should hang their head in shame at this appalling process. Moreover, we should recognize that this genocide can only continue because of muddied coverage like this. Coverage that only pretends to be cutting when, in reality, it prolongs the spilling of innocent blood.