Irresponsible Journalism Stokes the Flames of Antisemitism

Thursday evening, The New York Times credited its reporting on New York State yeshivas as the impetus for this week’s passage of legislation banning corporal punishment in all classrooms.

As KnowUs previously pointed out when The Times first credited itself for the bill, the bill’s very sponsor, Senator Julia Salazar, publicly debunked The Times’ portrayal on X/Twitter of why she introduced the bill, stating:

“To be clear: We introduced this bill because the law should *explicitly* ban corporal punishment in all schools. The use of physical or violent methods to ostensibly discipline students has happened in many schools. I haven’t seen any evidence of it being a pattern in yeshivas.”

This sentiment was echoed by the bill’s co-sponsor, Senator Andrew Gounardes.

As we have seen with the Times’ reporting on the Middle East, facts sometimes seem relegated to pesky, irrelevant obstacles standing in the way of a desired narrative about Jews.

Agudath Israel writes this not because it supports corporal punishment, but because it demands responsible journalism. Whether it is this reporting, attributing a bill’s passage to yeshivas when its sponsors say yeshivas played no role, or when the Times, BBC, and other media rush to side with Hamas’ condemnation of Israel for a Gaza hospital explosion which US, UK, French, and other responsible intelligence agencies have now determined, in fact, emanated from a rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, media outlets have an ethical and journalistic obligation to their audience.

Misleading reportage is always reprehensible. But when Jewish students at Cooper Union need to barricade themselves in a library to protect themselves from pro-Palestinian demonstrators pounding on the doors; when a woman is punched at a NYC subway terminal “for being Jewish;” and when antisemitism and tensions are aflare due to world events, responsible, unbiased journalism is a moral imperative.