Marry yourselves to terrorists in haste, repent at leisure? The New York Times has all but redefined ‘leisure’ in this old axiom with its ever-so-slow retreat from its initial report that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza.

A week ago, the NYT and every other American media outlet swallowed that Hamas claim without question while sourcing it from “Gaza’s health ministry. Even after Israel provided video of the failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and radio communications from Hamas confirming the incident as friendly fire, American news media declared that the IDF hadn’t “proven” their case.

Now, a week later, the ‘Paper of Record’ grudgingly admits that the claim came from Hamas and never did have any evidence supporting it. The headline itself is a marvel in the annals of modified limited hangouts (via Power Line):

I’ve screen-capped the headline, because the NYT has developed a nasty habit of ‘evolving’ its headlines. Especially on this story.

It's like the "Homer into the Bushes" meme just with NYT pic.twitter.com/w2lOIwUgTc

— American Prometheus (@daniopp) October 17, 2023

The article itself notes that the “Gazan authorities” have changed their story and have refused to provide any evidence of any version of its claims. It never does explain, however, why the Times or any other American media outlet repeated their allegations without demanding that evidence first:

Six days after Hamas accused Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza City and killing hundreds of people, the armed Palestinian group has yet to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the strike, says it cannot find the munition that hit the site and has declined to provide detail to support its count of the casualties.

Within an hour of the blast on Tuesday night, the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry accused Israel of attacking the Ahli Arab hospital, a medical center in Gaza City where scores of families had been sheltering. The allegation was soon denied by Israel but quickly accepted and amplified by Arab leaders across the Middle East, setting off unrest throughout the region. The claim was widely cited by international news outlets, including The New York Times, before Israel issued its denial.

But in the days since, as new evidence contradicting the Hamas claim has emerged, the Gazan authorities have changed their story about the blast.

Oh, and speaking of the “hundreds of people” claimed by Hamas to have been killed in this explosion, that target keeps dancing around too:

Spokespeople have released death tolls varying from 500 to 833, before settling on 471.  The Hamas-run health ministry has also declined to release further details about those 471 victims, and all traces of the munition have seemingly vanished from the site of the blast, making it impossible to assess its provenance. Raising further questions about Hamas’s claims, the impact site turned out to be the hospital parking lot, and not the hospital itself.

Yes, this certainly “raised further questions about Hamas’ claims,” but the NYT is six days late to that development, too. Had they waited to report the story until sunrise after the explosion — just a few hours after Hamas made these “claims” — they would have seen that the hospital only had its windows broken and the parking lot took the hit. In fact, they would have also noticed the lack of an impact crater in the lot and the very limited damage to the cars, in roughly a 20-meter or less diameter. An Israeli strike would have caused far more damage and left a significant impact crater.

Reporters on the scene and analysts reviewing the photos and video noticed that immediately. The IDF had also responded within hours to offer evidence that the impact came from a faulty PIJ rocket launch, hardly unusual, since roughly 20% or so of all such launches fail and land in Gaza rather than Israel. Given all of this, one might have thought that the NYT and other American media outlets might have waited until at least the site could be seen in daylight before proclaiming that Israel deliberately struck a hospital — and give Hamas a propaganda victory that turned into violent riots around the world.

Or at least, failing that, the American news media would have immediately corrected their reporting when the sun rose to calm the response. The Wall Street Journal initially screwed it up too, but they didn’t wait seven days to correct the record and call BS on Hamas’ claims.  Instead, the New York Times gave Hamas — not “Gazan health authorities,” but the terrorist group that had just massacred and butchered at least 1400 Israeli civilians in an invasion — six full days to provide evidence of their “claims.”

And even when Hamas refuses to do so, the NYT can’t just report that Hamas lied and they fell for their propaganda. The Paper of Record won’t correct the record to show that the Israelis and the photographic evidence utterly debunked this complaint of a war crime from a terrorist cult that just beheaded a number of babies in Israel. The most they can muster is a passive-voice headline that proclaims that “Hamas fails to make case.”

So has the New York Times. It has failed to make its case of being an institution of actual journalism. It has become a tool of terrorists and a propaganda amplifier for radicals. And unfortunately, it’s hardly alone in the American media industry.

On that note, please read this Hall of Fame-worthy Ackshually from New York Magazine ‘reporter’ Eric Levitz. He helpfully explains that headless babies do not necessarily mean that they were beheaded, or something:

Last night, I asserted that this report indicated that babies were beheaded. This was an overstatement. I should have said that the report established that babies were found headless, a fact that lends plausibility to claims of beheading, but which does not prove them.

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) October 22, 2023

He later explains that he is just demanding precision:

8) So, please understand that my insistence on precision about what exactly befell these murdered innocents is rooted in a mere concern for accurately representing the findings of the forensic pathologists' report.

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) October 23, 2023

Well, as soon as Levitz can explain an alternate process other than beheading for finding babies with their heads cut off, I guess we can all salute his dedication to precision. Until then, this goes along with the efforts by American media and reporters to demand evidence of guilt when it comes to Hamas ‘decolonizers’ and evidence of innocence from Israelis and Jews.

Addendum: At least the NYT now admits that the Gaza “health authorities” are Hamas. ABC News hasn’t yet admitted that to its readers and seems very uninterested in “precision” to boot:

I see @ABC is still misspelling "Hamas" as "Palestinian Health Authority." https://t.co/ryh8TxMnvY

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) October 23, 2023

Those numbers include the 470-something claimed in the al-Ahli explosion, by the way.

Update: If this new report was a classic of “modified limited hangouts,” today’s new “Editors’ Note” is a perfect example of “mistakes were made” accountability theater:

The Times’s initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials, and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast. However, the early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.

The Times continued to update its coverage as more information became available, reporting the disputed claims of responsibility and noting that the death toll might be lower than initially reported. Within two hours, the headline and other text at the top of the website reflected the scope of the explosion and the dispute over responsibility.

Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified.

Translation: We regurgitated propaganda from terrorists as reported fact, and then got caught but refused to admit it. By the way, their story this morning never even mentions this “editor’s note,” nor does the original article — which carries no correction reflecting even this admitted series of errors. This is the only correction noted on the original report, at the bottom:

A correction was made on Oct. 18, 2023: An earlier version of this article described incorrectly a video filmed by a woman at the hospital after the blast. The hospital itself was not ruined; its parking lot was damaged most heavily in the blast.

Why isn’t this “editors’ note” at the top of the original report or mentioned in today’s article?