The New York Times’ coverage of the Israel-Hamas war was grossly skewed toward the Palestinian side and against Israel, according to a peer-reviewed academic study. Israeli casualties were consistently omitted or minimized, while Palestinian suffering was amplified and given far greater prominence throughout.
The study’s author, Edieal Pinker, a professor at the Yale School of Management, published his findings in the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism after the paper cleared formal peer review. Pinker’s research quantitatively evaluated 1,559 New York Times articles published between October 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024, coding each one across dozens of specific categories to assess whether the coverage carried a consistent narrative imbalance.
The findings were stark. Ninety-one percent of the analyzed articles failed to mention any Israeli casualty that occurred after October 7. Of the full 1,559-article corpus, 1,412 articles omitted any mention of both Israeli post-October 7 casualties and Hamas combatant deaths together. Fifty percent of the articles did not reference the Israeli hostages Hamas was holding, and 41 percent omitted mentions of Israeli casualties from the October 7 attack itself, even as the hostages remained the central issue in every ceasefire negotiation of the war.
AFSI Insight
The growing body of research confirms what many Israel supporters have long recognized: major Western media outlets have consistently presented an incomplete and distorted picture of the Israel-Hamas war. Studies of The New York Times, BBC, and other major outlets document the disproportionate emphasis on Palestinian suffering while minimizing Israeli casualties, Hamas’s responsibility for initiating and sustaining the war, and the plight of the hostages.
AFSI believes this is more than a matter of editorial style—it shapes public opinion and policy. When Hamas’s terrorism and Israeli suffering are minimized while unverified Hamas casualty figures are repeatedly amplified, the public is denied the full truth about the conflict. Israel deserves coverage that acknowledges both sides of the story and holds Hamas accountable for the war it started.
The data matters—and so does telling the truth.
Source:
The pattern is in the data: New York Times, BBC studies confirm anti-Israel media bias, by Tamar Stein, September 14, 2026