YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Nicholas Kristof and the Collapse of Journalistic Standards.

Kristof himself offers a telling hedge in his column. He writes that “it’s impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are” – which is an interesting disclaimer in a piece that also calls the assaults “systematic,” “widely practiced,” and “frequent.”

Adding to all of this, the timing of the piece is highly suspect: published the day before the release of a major Israeli report on Hamas sexual violence during the October 7 attack, which, unlike Kristof’s piece, is deeply sourced with documentary evidence. It’s difficult to view Kristof’s column as anything other than an attempt to shift focus and paint a false moral equivalency.

Ultimately, this is not just another case of Hamas propaganda being laundered for the Western masses. It is a striking example of the disintegration in journalistic standards that is eroding trust in the press. I know many who have published opinion pieces in the New York Times, usually representing moderate viewpoints, and they describe a strenuous fact checking process – but it appears to be selectively enforced.

The Times should have applied particular scrutiny to Kristof given his recent ambitions.

Scrutiny in pursuit of accuracy is no way to push the NYT’s preferred narrative, as Walter Duranty showed the paper almost a century ago.

Nothing has changed since.