Bias in the Media
On October 13, 2025, the very day that the whole world celebrated the cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza, the New York Times front page focused instead on what it called “devastating blows” to Israel’s relationship with America. The Times lead article that day proclaimed: “Israel’s reputation in the United States is in tatters.”
This conclusion purported to be based on a Times poll. But the questions in the Times poll were biased, the results were distorted, and the article was slanted. Any competent trial lawyer knows how to phrase questions that generate the desired answers. That’s what this poll did. The Times article was based on the following poll question: “In the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, which side do you sympathize with more: Israel or the Palestinians?” But Israel has been involved in an existential war, not a mere “dispute,” in Gaza. Calling it a dispute trivializes it and undermines the justification for Israel’s use of military force. Armed force is customary in a war, but not in a dispute. Moreover, Israel’s military adversary in Gaza is not “the Palestinians.” Israel’s heavily armed opponent, hidden in deep underground tunnels, is Hamas, a terrorist organization that started this war, advocates the destruction of Israel by armed force, has bombarded Israel with rockets for years, and zealously opposes America. Despite this, the very lengthy Times article never mentioned Hamas–not once—and neither did the poll question on which it relied.
A poll purporting to assess American opinion about the Hamas-Israel war which never mentions Hamas and never mentions the war is worthless.
An example of the disparate impact resulting from the use or absence of these words can be found in a Washington Post poll which the Times cited (but also mischaracterized.) The Post reported that Jews were “almost evenly divided over Israel’s actions in Gaza” based on a poll question about “the military action Israel has taken in Gaza.” The question did not mention Hamas or the war. But when asked whether “Hamas has committed war crime against Israelis,” 94% of the Post poll respondents answered yes and only 2% said no. When asked “Who do you blame more for deaths of civilians in Gaza during the war?” and given a choice between Hamas and “Israeli’s military,” 68% blamed Hamas.
Moreover, the Times poll contained numerous highly suggestive questions about “civilian casualties” caused by Israel, including this whopper: “Do you think Israel is intentionally or unintentionally killing civilians?” That is tantamount to the classic: “When did you stop beating your spouse?” These questions were designed to produce anti-Israel responses. There were no questions in the Times poll about whether Hamas caused civilian casualties or engaged in any other misconduct.
The Times central claim was that its poll “found that slightly more voters sided with the Palestinians then with Israelis.” But the Times poll never asked respondents whether they “side with” either of the parties. Its poll question—which the Times article did not disclose– asked whether respondents “sympathize” more with Israel or the Palestinians, which is a very different question. It is hard not to “sympathize” with the Palestinians, since the media relentlessly portrays them –but not Israelis– as innocent victims enduring great suffering. “Sympathizing with” is not the same as “siding with.” Many Americans sympathized with the Japanese who were devastated by the US atomic bomb attacks in World War II—as reflected by the enormous popularity of John Hersey’s empathetic masterpiece “Hiroshima” – but they surely did not side with Japan in its war against our country.
The Times poll’s bias was compounded by its juxtaposition of “Israel” with “the Palestinians.” “Palestinians” are people–human beings—with whom it is natural to sympathize. “Israel” is an entity, a state, a government, for which sympathy is not a typical emotion. Although the article says that the poll asked whether respondents sided with “Palestinians or Israelis”, the poll in fact did not ask about Israelis. It asked whether respondents sympathize more with “Israel or the Palestinians.”
It is also noteworthy that the Times poll was conducted before Israel accepted and Hamas declined fully to accept President Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, and before Israel implemented the cease-fire. These events were highly likely to influence public opinion in Israel’s favor, and they rendered a pre-existing poll largely moot. Moreover, the Times had fully reported the poll results in a major article on September 29, with frenzied prose calling the results “stunning,” “seismic,” “striking,” “starkly negative,” “a major deterioration”— the list goes on. The Times reporters practically stood up and cheered, they were so excited about these results.
The poll was conducted on September 22-27; accordingly, the September 29 article reporting it was timely. Why publish a lengthy duplicative article about the same poll two weeks later on October 13 when it was no longer timely, indeed when it was stale? Evidently, the do-over was designed to reinforce the Times theme — that Americans no longer support Israel and that there is a “new incentive for even moderate Democrats in Congress to get tough on Israel” — lest that notion be overshadowed or reversed by the positive current news about the cease – fire. How else to explain featuring early in the October 13 article a month-old anti-Israel comment in a conversation between Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson –not exactly the Times favorite interlocutors– followed by an “expert” asserting that “Israel is seen as a villain.”
Finally, even in this biased poll, the differential between respondents who sympathize with Israel and those who sympathize with the Palestinians was only one percent, reflecting the views of 11 out of 1075 respondents. That surely does not demonstrate that Israel’s reputation is “in tatters”.
On January 1 of this year, the Times published my letter urging the media to stop sponsoring its own polls. Doing so, I said, “creates a substantial conflict of interest. How can a media outlet objectively report on, question, or give proper weight to a poll that it has sponsored and financed? “Unfortunately, they did not take my advice.
The ultimate lesson from this is that all polls, especially those purporting to reflect public opinion, should be taken with a grain of salt. Beyond that, if such distortion can be found in our nation’s leading newspaper, how much greater bias must there be in other media, not to mention on the Internet? So, don’t believe everything you read/hear.
Mark H. Alcott
October 22, 2025
