Journalism Professors Want Probe Into Widely Cited NYT Article Alleging Mass Rape By Hamas
The professors said in the letter that they wanted clarification on the processes of how the paper selected freelancers for the report
A group of journalism professors penned an open letter to The New York Times to call on the paper to launch an investigation into its 31 December 2023 article titled, “‘Screams Without Words’: Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.”
The letter called on the probe into the report based on “compelling reports over many months, in several news outlets and on social media,” calling into question the veracity of the report.
“The Times’ editorial leadership appears to have largely dismissed these reports and remains silent on important and troubling questions raised about its reporting and editorial processes. We believe this inaction is not only harming The Times itself, it also actively endangers journalists, including American reporters working in conflict zones as well as Palestinian journalists (of which, the Committee to Protect Journalists estimates, around 100 have been killed in this conflict so far),” the letter read.
The Times, citing “Israeli officials,” reported that everywhere “Hamas terrorists struck — the rave, the military bases along the Gaza border and the kibbutzim — they brutalized women.”
A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.
Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.
The Intercept reported in February that one of the article’s authors, Anat Schwartz, an “Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official with no prior reporting experience, had social media posts that could call her objectivity into question. She liked a post on X saying that Israel needed to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.”
“Violate any norm, on the way to victory,” read the post, according to the report. “Those in front of us are human animals who do not hesitate to violate minimal rules.”
The report called the article “a bombshell and galvanized the Israeli war effort at a time when even some of Israel’s allies were expressing concern over its large-scale killing of civilians in Gaza. Inside the newsroom, the article was met with praise from editorial leaders but skepticism from other Times journalists.”
Laurel Leff, a professor in the School of Journalism and associate director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, penned a column in Haaretz that said, in almost 30 years as a professor, she’s never experienced a time where “colleagues found an article so flawed that they needed to band together to demand action.”
She was skeptical of the letter that she described as clouded. She concluded: “Not every consequential story deserves an independent investigation. In this case, the gist of the story has held up; no clear evidence of journalistic wrongdoing has emerged, and The Times has exhibited some willingness to respond to criticisms. The professors calling for an investigation therefore seem more interested in joining an ongoing propaganda war than in righting a journalistic wrong. That's no place for a journalism professor to be.”
The professors said in the letter that they wanted clarification on the processes through which these freelancers, especially Schwartz, were vetted and how their work landed on Page One.
We are also alarmed at how during an on-stage conversation with Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta, [Jeffery] Gettleman said he did not “want to even use the word evidence” to describe certain details in the story, “because evidence is almost like the legal term that suggests you're trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court.” This language is in stark contrast to the story itself which uses the word “evidence” in the sub headline referring to the same information Gettleman was apparently discussing on stage. Further down, the story plainly states that the “two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence.” Can the paper “establish” fact if its own reporter does not consider his information “evidence?” the letter read.
The UN said in March that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks.”
Pramila Patten, the special representative of the secretary-general on Sexual Violence in Conflict, led an official visit to Israel from 29 January to 14 February to investigate.
“It was a catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors,” including sexual violence, she said, according to the statement. “The team also found convincing information that sexual violence was committed against hostages, and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may still be ongoing against those in captivity. While there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in the Nova music festival site, Route 232, and kibbutz Re’im, reported incidents of rape could not be verified in other locations. Concurrently, the team determined that at least two allegations of sexual violence in kibbutz Be’eri — widely reported in the media — were unfounded.”
Deepa Kumar, one of the professors who signed the letter, spoke to Democracy Now, that there have been numerous reports that have debunked its primary claims.
“And several journalism professors started to talk about what it means for The New York Times to run a piece like this even though its key claims have been debunked,” she said. “And so, a group of journalism professors got together and crafted this letter to The New York Times to, as you say, set up an investigative — an independent investigation of how the story was reported, written, and published.
And at the center of the controversy, really, is how the two freelancers who were recruited, particularly Anat Schwartz, who’s not a journalist at all — she’s an Israeli filmmaker and an intelligence officer for the — former Israeli officer for the Air Force, and she has no experience doing journalism. She’s recruited to do this story. And what The Intercept, for instance, and Jeremy Scahill — you’ve had him on the show to talk about this story — what they have shown is how she went around trying to find evidence for the claim that there was systematic violence against women on October 7th and couldn’t find any. She phones Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, rape crisis hotlines, and she couldn’t find any evidence, and so she turns to more dubious sources in order to actually create this story. And this is in her own words, right? They are quoting Anat Schwartz in her own words. And so, it was very troubling to professors of journalism to see such a shoddy article be published without a retraction or an investigation.”
The Trends Journal reached out to The Times for comment.
The GrayZone has also reported about questions involving The Times’s story and said the paper came “under fire from family members of Gal Abdush, the so-called ‘girl in the black dress’ who features as Exhibit A in Gettleman and company’s attempt to demonstrate a pattern of rape by Hamas on October 7. Not only have Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law each denied that she was raped, the former has accused the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle. Though the family’s comments have sparked a major uproar on social media, the Times has yet to address the serious breach of journalistic integrity that its staff is accused of committing.”
The media is a mouthpiece of world Jewry. They print what they’re told. The truth s irrelevant.