Imagine two newsworthy events. Event No. 1 involves a terrorist atrocity in which a bomb is set off in a house of worship, killing three dozen people and wounding 37. Event No. 2 involves the slashing of tires on 38 cars in an ethnic neighborhood. Now the question before the house is: which of these two stories is more important and more worthy of being prominently reported: the terror bombing of the tire slashing? By our lights, one would think that the slaughter and maiming of scores of people at prayer would be deemed more important and certainly more newsworthy than some slashed tires. Right? Wrong. According to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, it all depends on who is victimized by these activities in each case.
And so, the New York Times covers the tire-slashing caper in a 16-plus column-inch story, compleat with background, speculations as to who done it, etc. But when it comes the lethal bombing with 37 dead and 57 wounded, mostly students, the Times could spare only 2.5 column inches, giving its readers the bare-bone facts. The same is true of the Los Angeles Times which devotes 36 column inches plus a page-wide headline to the tire slashing, but only a 3.5 column-inch squib to the bombing.
How is that gross disparity of treatment of these events possible, you ask. Easy. The lethal bombing targeted a mosque in Baghdad. The bombers were evidently Arabs (killing other Arabs). In other words, as the Times would have it, no big deal — happens all the time. Ah, but it’s “different” with those tire slashers. They did their dirty work in Israel and the owners of the damaged cars were Arabs. Though no one has taken credit for the tire-slashing, the Times lets it be known that the slashers just had to be a “forbidden” Jewish group whose members presumably finally got tired of being blown up, shot at and stoned with rocks, and decided to strike back. Do we defend them? Absolutely not. But whether defense-worthy or not, both Times’ treatment of these incidents makes clear the deep-seated journalistic bias at both publications.
No, tire-slashing is bad business. But blowing up praying worshipers by the score is infinitely worse and as such deserving of more journalistic coverage and indignation that displayed by both Times’ coverage of these events.
Read the articles and judge for yourself. The New York Times articles are respectively Myra Noweck and Jodi Rudoren, Vandals Hit Mixed Suburb Of Jerusalem, Wed., June 19, 2013, at p. A12, and MIDDLE EAST: – Iraq: 37 Killed in Shiite Mosque, at p. A6. You can find the similar Los Angeles Times two-step performance in (a) Bathsheva Sobelman, Village Known for Coexistence Targeted in Israel, L.A. Times, June 19, 2013, and (b) a 3-inch squib about the Baghdad mosque bombing a few pages later: IRAQ: Suicide Blasts at Mosque Kill 34 .
And so it goes.
Decide for yourself: Can you think of another situation where the Times — NY or LA — would treat a lethal bombing of a house of worship with scores of dead and wounded, as less newsworthy and less prominently reported than some tire slashing?