SAUNDERS: You’ve seen the NYT image. You haven’t seen the correction it requires.

WASHINGTON

The New York Times has a credibility problem.

On July 24, the country’s newspaper of record published an online story with the headline, “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” which focused on impending famine among Gaza’s’ “most vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick.”

But an image from the story that ran on the front page of the Times’ July 25 newspaper, leading the article, is what captured the world’s attention. In the photograph, a Palestinian mother cradles her 18-month old child. His arms appear thin and you can see his spine protruding.

The newspaper’s photo caption read, “Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition. A doctor said the number of children dying of malnutrition in Gaza had risen sharply.”

You’ve seen the image. You cannot forget it.

The story quoted Mohammed’s mother saying her 18-month old son “was born a healthy child.” Cable news stations ran with the story that placed the child’s suffering at the feet of Israel.

But then investigative journalist David Collier looked into the story and found photos that showed Mohammed’s mother and 3-year-old brother. And they do not appear to be starving. Collier also found records that indicate Mohammed suffers from cerebral palsy and hypoxemia (low oxygen in the blood.)

“This isn’t the face of famine. It’s the face of a medically vulnerable child whose suffering was hijacked and weaponized — first by Hamas, then by global media,” Collier wrote on his website, david-collier.com.

Collier observed that public images “have either been deliberately cropped to remove the image of the healthy brother, blurred him into obscurity, or the journalists have only chosen to use photos in which the brother is not visible at all.”

This should be when the Gray Lady responds with a prompt correction.

Instead, the news organization ran an “Editors’ Note” on July 29 that said, “This article has been updated to include information about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza suffering from severe malnutrition. After publication of the article, The Times learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems.”

The newspaper’s communications team also posted a tweet from a spokesperson. The statement acknowledged the Times’ reporting on malnourished children, including Mohammed. “We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his condition.”

But not really.

Once again, the Times lives up to its anti-Israel reputation.

“Editors’ note,” I said to myself — where have we seen that before?

On a hunch, I looked to the newspaper’s opinion pages after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020. Riots followed in many American cities. The New York Times used its editorial and opinion pages to praise the protesters and add to the police pile-on.

There was one exception: an opinion piece written by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., under the headline, “Send in the Troops.” The contrarian piece sparked an in-house revolt from staffers that culminated in Editorial Page Editor James Bennet’s hasty departure.

A June 5, 2020 “Editors’ Note” offered that the Cotton “essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.”

And: “But given the life-and-death importance of the topic, the senator’s influential position and the gravity of the steps he advocates, the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny. Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved.”

Flawed and under-edited over a life-and-death issue? If you ask me, the Times should have copied the above message for its Editors’ Note on the multi-bylined Gaza famine story — under the heading “Correction.”

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.