Opinion | Why Did a Group of U.S. Journalism Professors Attack the New York Times' Story on Hamas Sexual Violence? By Laurel Leff

It was highly unusual for 59 journalism and communications professors to collectively challenge the reporting in a single news story. That of all Gaza war stories, only the NYT's investigation of Hamas rapes raised their ire – to the extent they contended it endangered journalists and may have helped precipitate 'genocide' – raises questions about their motivation

Laurel Leff is a professor in the School of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. She is the author of "Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper" and "Well Worth Saving: American Universities' Life-and-Death Decisions on Hiring Scholars from Nazi Europe".

May 8, 2024 5:30 pm IDT

Journalism and communication professors at several major U.S. universities took an unusual step recently, challenging the reporting in a single news story—The New York Times front-page investigative piece describing the sexual violence committed on October 7.

Fifty-nine professors (though they were not all tenured or journalism professors as The Washington Post incorrectly stated) wrote a letter to the Times publisher objecting to the article, "`Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7."

In almost 30 years as a journalism professor, I can't recall another time my colleagues found an article so flawed that they needed to band together to demand action. Sahan Mufti, a University of Richmond journalism professor who helped draft the letter, told me that he and his colleagues understood their response was "not typical" but felt the circumstances demanded it. They asked The Times to commission outside experts to "conduct a thorough and full independent review."

Of the thousands of stories that have been published about the Gaza War—let alone the universe of all recent news stories—what made "`Screams Without Words'" worthy of the professoriate's equivalent of the nuclear option? It's hard to say, even after reading the professors' letter and the supporting critique in The Intercept, a left-leaning U.S. news site.

The Intercept's meandering February article, which the professors allude to but don't assess, dwells upon an interview that one of the Times' three authors, Anat Schwartz, gave to Israel's channel 12. Schwartz stresses there how hard the story was to get.

Too hard is The Intercept's conclusion; Schwartz and The Times started with "a predetermined narrative"—presumably that systematic sexual violence had occurred—and then kept searching for proof even when it wasn't forthcoming. The Intercept skates past an obvious alternative—that reporting on sexual assaults, particularly those that took place in the midst of murder and mayhem, is exceedingly difficult, and that Schwartz's exhaustive approach reflected persistence rather than preconceptions.

At one point, The Intercept states that Schwartz contacted hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities and sexual assault hotlines. She wasn't "able to get a single confirmation from any of them," The Intercept writes, implying that rape, at least on a large scale, might not have occurred. But another explanation, and the more likely one, is that no one went to a hospital, walked into a rape crisis center, or called a hotline because almost everyone who had been sexually assaulted was dead.

Those who witnessed sexual violence also had reasons to initially stay quiet or to provide hazy accounts. The Times, which just won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its coverage of October 7 and the war in Gaza, quoted ten named sources (one with only a first, and another with only a last, name) who said they had witnessed sexual assaults, often while hiding in fear for their own lives, or had seen the aftermath in the form of mutilated bodies. The Intercept questions the credibility of many of these sources when it finally, 27 paragraphs in, gets to what should have been the centerpiece of its investigation.

The Times made at least one serious mistake. In a March update, The Times said it had related an unnamed source's statement that he had seen the partially clothed bodies of two murdered girls in Kibbutz Be'eri. Video showed those victims were clothed. The Times said it updated, rather than corrected, the story, because the source may have seen naked bodies elsewhere.

The ten named sources didn't back down, however, even when The Times reinterviewed some of them. Questions about some sources remain just that, questions. Given the story's subject and the circumstances, The Intercept's expectation of completely consistent stories and its demand for solid forensic evidence seem unrealistic. Israeli police admittedly and unfortunately did not use rape kits at the scene but that's largely because fighting was ongoing and there was pressure to retrieve, identify and bury bodies quickly.

Tellingly, the journalism and communication professors' letter didn't mention any of this, except the March update—a sign their concern is not primarily problematic sources. "The most troubling questions," the letter states, relate to The Times' use of Schwartz and another freelancer, Adam Sella. Aside from ill-advised "likes" on three tweets, however, there is no apparent evidence that the freelancers were biased.

Moreover, this is an odd context in which to raise concerns over freelancers. To cover the war in Gaza, The Times and other major news organizations understandably rely on Palestinian freelancers, many of whom acknowledge they aren't neutral, a fact neither the letter nor The Intercept article mentions.

The letter signers also are "alarmed" that Times investigative reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize winner, said during a panel discussion at Columbia University that he preferred not using the word "evidence" to describe details in the sexual violence story because it was too legalistic My colleagues apparently conclude that Gettleman was copping to writing a story unsupported by "evidence," when he seems merely to be saying he doesn't like the word.

What truly seems to bother the letter signers is not the story's reporting, as much as its impact, the difference they believe its publication made in the ongoing war. "In the minds of many people," they write (a dodge I would not let my students get away with), the story's appearance in December "fueled the fire at a pivotal moment when there might have been an opportunity to contain it before … the situation devolved into the `plausible' realm of genocide." The language is murky but the letter seems to be saying that but for The Times story the Israelis would have reversed course or the International Court of Justice would have come down harder on them.

In addition, the letter contends that The Times' continuing failure to run a correction "endangers journalists, including American reporters working in conflict zones as well as Palestinian journalists."

Along with raw speculation, missing logic, and over-the-top belief in a single New York Times story's ability to inflame the Israelis or dissuade the international community from taking tougher action, another issue hovers: Just what do these professors think The Times published that was so wrong and so potent that it helped precipitate "genocide"?

The letter writers never actually say. They cite two previous examples of Times investigations of its own reporting. Both times it was clear the newspaper had misled its readers; the inquiries were about how and why. In the lead up to the Iraq war, The Times told readers that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he didn't. In the scandal involving reporter Jayson Blair, The Times said Blair was places he wasn't, seeing things he didn't, and quoting people he didn't talk to.

So what did The Times get wrong in "`Screams Without Words'?" That it said sexual violence took place when it didn't? The letter signers can't possibly mean that especially after the United Nations reported "reasonable grounds to believe" that it had.

That the sexual violence that took place wasn't as significant or as systematic as The Times claimed? Perhaps, but that seems to be more of a judgment call than the kind of cataclysmic institutional failure at The Times that led to either the Iraq coverage or the Jayson Blair scandal. Moreover, could overemphasizing the systematic nature of the violence, rather than recounting the sheer brutality, have had the impact the professors claim and use to justify their call for an investigation?

I'm all for criticizing news organizations, including The Times (in fact I wrote an entire book doing just that), and I would encourage professors and news outlets to continue examining "`Screams Without Words'.'' As the letter points out, the absence of public editors to respond to complaints at The Times (and elsewhere) has left a serious accountability gap.

But 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.