How does this happen exactly? Look at this NY Times headline and then look at the giant photo below it. (Credit to my friend Jeryl Bier and to the person who pointed this out to him).

Great point ⬇️ https://t.co/NqBnXnluPF pic.twitter.com/MF18T6jpsi

— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) October 18, 2023

Now if you read the caption, you’ll see that the photo is of an Israeli strike that is not related to that story in the headline. The caption reads, “Israeli forces again bombarded Gaza with airstrikes on Tuesday, including the southern cities of Khan Younis, above, and Rafah.” So that image is not a bombed out hospital, but at first glance it seems like the photo is meant to illustrate the big headline above it. And this wasn’t a one-off. Yashar Ali noted that a Times tweet about the hospital also included a different photo of the same IDF strike in Khan Younis (which as Ali points out is 25km away).

In one of its first tweets about the bomb at al-Ahli al-Arab hospital, The New York Times used a photo from a different bombing site.

I’ve traced the photo to Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, which is approximately 25 km from Gaza City where the hospital is located. https://t.co/TJj2HNU9mx pic.twitter.com/VHg8lnjaYP

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 18, 2023

Here’s the tweet. There’s no indication that the photo is showing a different strike from a different day. Half a million people may have seen this tweet and probably most of them didn’t know what they were looking at.

For those that haven’t seen it already, here’s the actual site. There are some burned up cars and some people who were outside immediately adjacent to the impact were killed, but no buildings were knocked down like you see in those images above.

So let’s walk through it.

We now have video of the scene showing the explosion is from the parking lot and the buildings are in tact. There is no crater, no building demolished. This is inconsistent with the type of bomb many were suggesting yesterday. pic.twitter.com/HFKKxS8kvr pic.twitter.com/SpgG3Ktbiy

— AG (@AGHamilton29) October 18, 2023

The NY Times wasn’t the only site doing this:

⁦@ForeignPolicy⁩ this is incredibly misleading. This bomb site crater is in Khan Yunis (as you point out on your website). But your headline on X implies that this is at the hospital in Gaza City. The locations are 15 miles apart. You need to clarify. Very misleading. pic.twitter.com/ncGPe8WQIE

— howard klion (@hklion2) October 18, 2023

Here’s the full image from the site. Again, the caption below the story does say this is a photo of an Israeli airstrike from Khan Younis, but it’s tiny print compared to that screaming headline. I know for a fact this confused people because I saw a guy on Twitter pointing to this image/story as proof their was a big crater at the hospital.

It is perhaps worth noting what the impact of an Israeli airstrike looks like. That one above is probably 50-60 feet across and at least 10-12 feet deep. As I pointed out here, the crater at the hospital looks like this.

I don’t think the NY Times or Foreign Policy were intentionally trying to mislead anyone. The information about the source of the photos was there (except in the tweet) but I do think it was careless, especially given how important this story obviously was. The claims that US media made in the first hours after the explosion inflamed people around the world. A little more care was warranted here than to just grab the nearest photo of an Israeli airstrike. The Times must have agreed because they did change up the photo later.

The other part of this story that needed more scrutiny was the claim about 500 people being killed. Round numbers being handed out be a medical group that answers to Hamas should probably be questioned before putting them immediately into headlines even with the “Palestinians say” caveat.