The New York Times’ coverage of the first months of the war in Gaza contained “deep and systematic” bias against Israel, a new academic study by a Yale University professor has claimed.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the Studies in Conflict & Terrorism journal, found that in the 1,559 articles the American newspaper published between October 7 and June 7, 2024, there was a “deep and systematic” bias against Israel.
The articles often “almost completely” omitted Israeli casualties after October 7, casualties among Hamas terrorists, and Palestinian violence that occurred afterwards, according to the study’s author, Professor Adiel Pinker of the Yale School of Management.
“Drawing on a corpus of 1,559 news articles, I document a dominant narrative consistent with a framing that assigns near-exclusive agency and responsibility to Israel while diminishing Hamas’s role in sustaining the conflict,” he wrote.
Pinker argued the Times portrayed Israel as the “sole aggressor” in the conflict while portraying Palestinians as “passive victims”.
“Personal accounts of Palestinian suffering appear two out of every three days, while comparable accounts of Israeli suffering rarely appear,” he went on.
Approximately 473 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the Gaza War and related operations along the Gaza border since 2023, with dozens of civilians and police officers also killed and injured in terror attacks throughout the war, according to Israeli officials.
Other findings in the study included the word “Israel” appearing 27,205 times across the dataset, compared to just 8,499 mentions of Hamas. Of the 1,559 articles, 1,423 made no mention of both Israeli post-October 7 casualties and Hamas combatant deaths.
When you didn't think you could have more contempt for the NYT & the bias of MSM, this will solidify your outrage as to how unreliable once respected & now discredited news organizations have become. https://t.co/adeJUXHPX5
— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 13, 2026
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on X of the findings: "When you didn't think you could have more contempt for the NYT & the bias of [mainstream media], this will solidify your outrage as to how unreliable once respected & now discredited news organisations have become.”
The New York Times rejected Pinker’s finding, saying it “has covered this war with more rigour than virtually any other US news organisation, reporting on the conflict from all angles”.
“We remain open to good-faith disagreement but will not change our coverage to buttress entrenched perspectives,” the outlet said following the release of the report’s initial findings last year, per the New York Post.
To get more news, click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.